


The Unholy Three

by SophiaHawkins



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28061679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaHawkins/pseuds/SophiaHawkins
Summary: Set before A New Hope. Han Solo could sense he was dangerously close to having to care about somebody else's situation instead of just his own, and he hadn't stayed alive this long in the business he was in by getting involved in other people's affairs that didn't concern him. "What do you mean 'famous last words'?" he asked Chewbacca.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A little explanation before the story begins. I am not a huge Star Wars fan, I have seen A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back both exactly one time. After seeing A New Hope, I wanted to do a story with Han Solo, but didn't know enough about the canon universe to come up with anything. After seeing The Empire Strikes Back, the urge to actually do a Star Wars story came back with a vengeance. For this story, I took a lot from Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs and reworked, reshaped, twisted and mangled it to fit in the Star Wars universe. Readers will not have to be familiar with this story to understand what's going on here. I'm not overly familiar with the language and terminology used in the Star Wars canon so if I get anything wrong, please bear with me. All standard disclaimers, don't own so don't sue. Hope you all enjoy, please read and review.

The Unholy Three

"What do you mean I shouldn't have taken that left?" Han Solo demanded to know as he navigated his ship through an asteroid field. Every so often he could hear one hit the side of the _Millennium_ _Falcon_ and every other so often he could feel a bigger one hit the side of the ship, but thus far they were staying the course, "Once we get out of here we're going to be halfway to our destination."

Chewbacca snarled his disagreement from the seat next to him in the cockpit.

"The sooner we can get this cargo dropped off, the sooner we get paid, the sooner I can get Jabba paid back for that shipment I dropped," Han replied as he absently ran one hand across his throat, "He's not the kind of guy you want to _keep_ mad at you. I'm sure right now he'd love nothing more than to have my head mounted on a barbecue spit."

The wookiee grunted a response, to which Han slightly cringed as he added, "Them too." He sat slightly straighter as he realized, "Hey it's clearing up, I told you we'd get out in no time."

The whole ship jolted to one side as a larger asteroid hit it.

"Don't-say-a-word," Han warned Chewbacca.

Another thudding sound got both their attention, but for a different reason.

"That's not an asteroid," Han said, "That came from inside the ship."

He didn't like his friend's opinion and defensively replied, "Don't be stupid, nobody could be in here with us, we haven't touched ground for..."

Chewbacca howled in response.

"The hatch was _not_ open," Han insisted.

They argued for a couple more minutes before Han finally got fed up and told him, "Alright, alright, if it'll make you happy, we'll look." He set the controls for auto-pilot and got up from his seat. "Let's go."

* * *

Whatever the noise was, it hadn't reoccurred, but that still didn't get Han out of searching every inch of the ship. They were getting closer to having combed over every section of the _Falcon_ when they reached the crew quarters and discovered something seriously out of place.

"What the _hell_?" he asked in disbelief at the sight of a human body in the middle of the floor dressed in a sleeveless purple shirt, dark green pants and tan boots, the skin was similar to his own. The back of the head was covered with short red hair that stood up in small wavy spikes.

It didn't move. He nudged it with his foot, it still didn't move. He nudged it a little harder just incase it was some kind of sneak attack, it still didn't move. Crouching down beside it, he grabbed one of the hands and felt the wrist, there was a pulse. He pulled on the arm just enough to turn the whole body over.

It was a young woman, if even that much, Han wasn't a good judge of ages but she looked fairly young. Fresh bruises were starting to form on her arms from being bounced around during the trip through the asteroid field, by all rights she should already have been killed not being strapped in during that little detour.

"Come on kid, wake up," he tapped her cheek a couple times before flat out smacking her, and that made her eyes open.

The girl's eyes moved every which direction as they tried to focus on something, and then finally she looked straight up at the two males hovering over her, and in a dazed voice she asked, "Mom?"

Han and Chewie looked at each other with very similar expressions, then Han looked back at the girl and told her, "Get up." He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. Once she stood up he discovered she was nearly a foot shorter than him.

"What's going on?" she asked as she slowly looked around.

"I'm asking the questions," Han told her, "starting with what the hell are you doing here?"

"Where..." she turned her head and looked one way, then the other, "Where am I?"

"Onboard the _Millennium Falcon_ , I'm the captain of this ship, and you're a stowaway. There are serious consequences for breaking and entering a private ship," he said sternly.

The girl blinked a couple times, then rotated one shoulder until it popped, and replied simply, "It's not breaking and entering if the ship's not locked."

"How the hell did you get in here?" Han asked her.

"The hatch was open."

Chewbacca grunted.

"Oh shut up," Han told him. He looked at the girl and demanded to know, "Who are you?"

It took a couple seconds for her to respond, as if she hadn't understood the question right away. Very simply she answered, "I am Gwynplaine."

"Gwynplaine what?" Han Solo asked.

She shrugged her shoulders and answered just as simply, "Just Gwynplaine."

"No, who's your family?" he asked.

"Don't got a family," she replied.

The smuggler paused for a moment, then he asked the girl, "How old are you?"

She didn't answer him. Instead she raised one hand in front of her face and began counting on her fingers.

"Never mind," Han dismissed the question. Some of the initial shock and anger at somebody stowing away in his ship left him, but he was still chock full of burning curiosity. "What're you doing here?"

"Just trying to get out of that place," Gwynplaine answered.

"What place?"

"The place you were docked at," the redheaded girl answered.

"You were there." Of course it _had_ to be the last stop they'd made. They'd just collected a shipment of weapons to smuggle, and had to make an emergency landing on the first planet they found to do some quick repairs to the ship. That had cost them precious time to deliver the load, that was why after fixing it again he'd decided to try their luck zipping through an asteroid field. Though it had taken a couple hours to get out of there, Han could hardly even remember the name of the place. It was little more than a stopping through place from mission to mission, he'd been there a few times but it wasn't much different from a dozen planets across the galaxy.

"Is that where you live?" he asked.

Gwynplaine looked at him as if she didn't understand the question. "I live wherever I go."

"I mean that's where your home is."

"Don't have a home," she answered.

Han sighed, he was getting a headache.

"We're not getting anywhere," he murmured to Chewbacca as he sat down. "You live with somebody, right?"

"I did," she said in a tone that almost seemed timid.

"Who?"

He was met with silence.

"Come on, kid, I don't have all day," Han sniped, "Who do you live with?"

"A group of gypsies," she finally answered.

"I don't have time for jokes either," Han told her.

"It's true," she replied quietly but firmly. "We never stayed anywhere too long, here today, gone tomorrow, the next day, the day after...just pick up and travel all over the galaxy."

Han sucked in a noisy breath as he looked for the strength to not throttle this kid for stringing him along and wasting his time. "Right, so these gypsies are your family."

"Don't _have_ a family, I told you," she responded.

"Then why were you with a bunch of gypsies?"

She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, "Just always have...as far back as I can remember they were just always there. I don't remember anyone else."

Slowly it started to dawn on Han Solo that this could actually be real, that this kid could actually be telling the truth.

"So what're you doing here?" he asked.

"There was a sandstorm shortly after we landed and I got lost. By the time I got back, they had gone," Gwynplaine answered.

"There was no sandstorm," Han told her, "we were there."

She shook her head, "No, this was days before you got there. I waited at first and thought they'd come back, they didn't. So then I tried to figure out how to get out of there. There wasn't a lot of traffic, when you arrived, and I saw the hatch was open, I thought I could at least get out of there."

"And you about got yourself killed because of it," Han remarked.

"I didn't want to stay there, the people there were horrible," Gwynplaine said.

Slowly Han tried to put all the pieces together in his head but something wasn't adding up. "They had to know they were a head short, and they didn't come back?"

The girl shook her head.

"Why were they there in the first place?" Han wanted to know.

"They'd stop anywhere they could for a day or so, make some money, move on," Gwynplaine explained.

"And what'd you do during all this, just follow them around?"

She shook her head grimly, "No, I had my own role in it. People _always_ have their prices, always have."

The statement itself was cryptic and grim at the same time, it was ambiguous but something about it still sent a slight chill through the smuggler's blood. He could sense he was dangerously close to having to care about somebody else's situation instead of just his own, and he hadn't stayed alive this long in the business he was in by getting involved in other people's affairs that didn't concern him.

"Do me a favor," he told the girl, " _don't_ tell me about it, I don't want to know."

Gwynplaine slightly nodded and said cynically, "Of course, why should you be different from anyone else?"

He ignored that comment. Instead he ordered her out of the quarters, and when the three of them reached the lounge, he pointed and told her in a commanding tone, "Go sit down."

Half to his surprise, she obeyed without a word.

"Strap yourself in," he told her, "we got a long way to go and it's gonna get bumpy."


	2. Chapter 2

"I don't care what you say," Han said as he returned to the cockpit, "We're not turning around."

Chewbacca disagreed and let him know.

"We're finally making good time, if we turn around now and head back to that hellhole of a planet, do you have any idea how long it's going to take to get back on track? And through the asteroid field again. We already had to stop once to make repairs, I'm not doing that again. We're staying on schedule, gonna meet the buyer, drop off the weapons, that's the end of it."

The wookiee howled his disapproval at the plan.

"It's not my fault we're stuck with her," Han pointed out.

Chewbacca had a response to that too.

"Alright so the hatch _was_ open, you win," Han replied, "we're still not turning around. She has no business being here in the first place."

The low snarled response had him admitting that he was also curious about this newfound passenger and her story.

"They had to realize she was gone and they never went back to look for her?" he asked himself as well as his friend, "It doesn't make sense."

Chewy had a response for that too.

Han nodded, "I know, if she was lying she could've made up a lot likelier story."

The answer had finally popped in his head about the name of that planet they'd briefly stopped on, Ar-ra, he knew it well enough to know he wasn't looking forward to going back, no matter the circumstances. He turned to the wookiee and insisted, "But I'm still not turning around, do you know how much time we're going to lose?"

It was obvious that Chewbacca did, and he still disagreed with Han's idea.

"Look, you can rip both arms out of my sockets, I don't care," Han said determinedly, "we're not turning around until we make the drop-off, and that's _that_."

* * *

"Okay, here's the plan," Han addressed Gwynplaine, "we're going to circle back around to Ar-ra and try and find out what happened to the people you were with, and as soon as we're done there we're getting back on course to meet with a prospective buyer."

The young girl looked at him as if she didn't know what to make of this announcement. She merely responded, "Thank you."

Han turned to Chewbacca and murmured through his gritted teeth, "I hope you're happy." He turned back to the kid and asked her, "What was the name of the ship you were on?"

" _Krull_ ," Gwynplaine answered.

"That should easy enough to find out about," he said, and pointing a finger at the girl he told her, "On the way back, don't make any trouble, I've already had a long day and I'm not in the mood, you got that?"

"Yes, captain," she responded simply.

He blinked. Han made it a habit _not_ to take on many passengers, but the few times he'd had to, he'd always stressed the point that he was the captain, he was in charge, and this was the only time anybody had actually addressed him as such.

* * *

It was late when they returned to Ar-ra, nobody was around and were it not for the lights of the establishments, would be pitch black. They'd just gotten off the ship and Han was trying to get his bearings when something wrapped around his ribs and was choking the air out of him. After letting out a brief "Gah!" he realized it was Gwynplaine clinging to him. He pushed her away and told her, "Don't do that!"

"Sorry," she said meekly.

It was a small planet, the joke was it got its name because you could orbit the whole thing in the time it took to say it. It was a place to stop, fuel your ship, get a drink, something to eat, but little more than that. Han figured if anybody anywhere was going to be able to help them, the first place to look was in the bar. As they walked up to the place he felt Gwynplaine grabbing onto the back of his belt and sticking to him like a shadow. He reached behind and jabbed at her to back up, but she never got more than a foot away from him. The three of them headed into the establishment and found the lights were on but the place was empty.

"Hello?" Han called out, "anybody here?"

"We're closed!" a rude voice called back.

He looked around but didn't see anyone. "Who said that?"

"I did."

Han looked around again, still nothing. "Where are you?"

"Up here!"

He turned, and followed the voice to a small hole in a wall shaped like a door, the door itself was only about a foot tall, it rested six feet off the ground. Standing in the little doorway was a creature that looked similar to a squirrel, its little hands were folded together in front of it and its yellow eyes practically glowed as it chewed out the smuggler. "We're closed! Come back tomorrow!"

"We don't want service," Han said as he headed over to the wall, "we need some information."

"I don't give anything away for free, you want information, come buy it with a drink in the morning," the creature said, then turned around and swung the door shut.

"Hey wait a minute!" Han pushed the door open and stuck his head in it, "We're not going anywhere until-" A sudden noise of someone biting something could be heard followed immediately by Han's pained scream of, "OWWW!"

He stood back, his fingers pinching his nose, as the creature came back out and shook one tiny fist at him and prattled off in a high pitched tirade that sounded like wordless gibberish. However it was coherent enough for Han Solo to reply furiously, "My nose does _not_ look like a walnut! Now look, we're not going anywhere until someone tells us what happened to the _Krull_ that was here."

The creature intertwined its tiny fingers and its eyes took on a different glow as it said in a notably calmer tone, "The gypsy ship...you'll have to speak to Mundo."

"Who's that and where do we find him?" Han wanted to know.

* * *

Mundo was one of Ar-ra's patrol agents. He stood half a foot taller than Han, his skin was black, his head was bald but he had a short black beard and sharply pointed eyebrows, he was covered in black armor that went up to his neck, the official uniform of the planet's patrol who kept the peace and inflicted lethal force when warranted by outsiders landing and looking for trouble. He walked a night beat, Han had been able to find him a few streets down from the bar, he'd had Chewie and the kid stay back, but if the conversation started to go sideways he knew the wookiee would come in blasting. So far it had been a civil conversation.

Mundo grimly nodded his head in remembrance, "The day of the sandstorm, the _Krull_ crashed right after takeoff, we pulled the bodies out of the wreckage, there were no survivors but a couple of them lived a few minutes after we found them."

Han sighed and closed his eyes like he had a migraine. "Great, just great. Did they say anything?"

"One was too far gone in shock, one of the others mumbled something about forgiveness for some crime," Mundo answered.

Han snorted, "A band full of gypsies, no shortage what that could mean."

"It wasn't a gypsy," Mundo shook his head. "His name was Ursus Hardquanonne."

"I should know the name?" Han asked.

"He was one of the most reputable doctors this side of the galaxy," Mundo answered, "a _long_ time ago."

From the way he said it, Han could tell there was more to the story. "So what happened?"

"He disgraced the profession, developed some kind of god complex and started performing a lot of experimental surgeries just to say he could, he was drummed out of the practice and exiled. There was a bounty on his head if he ever set foot back on his home planet."

"So what's a guy like that doing running around with gypsies?" Han asked.

"Probably the only people who'd even keep his company," Mundo guessed.

Han spent a minute taking this information in and told the patrol agent, "Well that leaves me with a problem then, I got this kid who was on their ship, and now what the hell am I going to do with her?"

"A gypsy kid?" Mundo asked.

Han shook his head, "No gypsy, look," he turned and pointed back to Gwynplaine who stood at the corner with Chewbacca.

Mundo eyed her up and down and commented, "Not too bad looking, there are places she could go. She looks a little young but there _is_ a market for that too, I could give you the names of a few places you'd get a good price for her."

Something in Han's stomach turned and he had the same cold feeling in his body as he'd had earlier when Gwynplaine made her comment about everybody having a price.

"Uh no thanks," he replied, "I don't think I'm interested."

"Then my advice would be find some small farming planet to dump her on and run," Mundo told him. "Any kid a gypsy would buy has to have something wrong with it, and you don't want to be stuck with a problem like that."

"Buy?" Han Solo blinked. "You think her family _sold_ her to the gypsies?"

"It's more common than them stealing them, and any parent who'll sell theirs, there's something wrong with the kid, and since she doesn't look deformed, that probably means there's something wrong under the hood. Trust me, it's the best thing you could do, it doesn't take a genius to work the fields."

"And then what?" Han asked.

Mundo shook his head, "There's no 'then what', that's their life, work the fields, harvest the crops, and likely after a while have babies that would repeat the cycle. It's the best quality of life they can hope for."

Han felt his eyebrows knotting together as he responded, "Doesn't sound like the best quality to me."

"Don't think too much on it, Solo, that's their lot in life, just be glad it's not yours."

"One more question...what would she have been doing the whole time she traveled with the gypsies?" Han asked.

Mundo looked him in the eyes and said matter-of-factly, "There are things we're better off not knowing."

Han walked away from the conversation feeling like he needed to be run through a spaceship wash, he was starting to see why Gwynplaine had been so anxious to hop the _Falcon_ and get out of there. He walked back over to her and Chewbacca, Gwynplaine looked at him and asked, "Well? What'd he say? Does he know where they went?"

He swallowed a hard lump in his throat, and was only willing to say, "Let's get back to the ship, I'll tell you after we take off."


	3. Chapter 3

Han waited until they'd put a few thousand miles between them and that miserable excuse for a planet, but he knew he couldn't stall the bad news any longer. He hated emotional scenes, and he wished he could tell Gwynplaine what happened without her falling apart on him, but he wouldn't give much for those chances, for one she was female and for another she was still a kid, so he could easily foresee this being doubly bad. He left Chewbacca at the controls and escorted the girl to the lounge, and would've preferred to be anywhere else but where he was. She was looking at him and it annoyed him, it was like she was looking right through him, waiting.

"There's no easy way to say this," he told her, "during the sandstorm the _Krull_ crashed and there were no survivors. I don't know why they tried taking off but it wasn't that they didn't come back, it's that they died on impact."

He waited. And waited. He'd hoped to avoid an emotional scene, and somehow it looked like he'd gotten his wish. Gwynplaine didn't say anything, she didn't make any sound whatsoever. She just stood there, there was hardly even a glint of recognition in her eyes that she comprehended what he'd just said. The silence was even more unnerving, he'd expected _some_ reaction, but there was nothing.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she finally spoke. The words came slow, as if he was struggling to make sense of this. "So...now I have nothing. Now...I really am alone...why don't I feel surprised?"

He couldn't answer that, and he didn't try.

"Look..." his mind was scrambling to come up with some solution, anything, all he could offer was, "you can ride with us until we get this shipment dropped off, after that..." he couldn't even think after that, he had no idea what they were looking at, a breath escaped him with a sound like something deflating and said, "we'll figure something out. Did you ever hear anybody say anything about your family? Who they are, where they were, anything?"

Gwynplaine shook her head. "Nobody really talked to me...just _at_ me."

Try as he might, Han couldn't fight down a question that was nagging at him, "And you actually wanted to go back with these people?"

She shrugged her shoulders, "I never knew anything else, if they left me, what would I do? Where would I go? I'd never had to think about it before. The last few days I've had to think about a lot."

The air felt thin, Han had to get out of there and back to the cockpit where he could think. "Get strapped in, if we're going to deliver our cargo on time, we're gonna have to go back through the asteroid field, and we'll be there soon."

* * *

It didn't really dawn on Han that he'd relayed everything he'd found out both from Mundo and Gwynplaine to Chewbacca during the flight. He actually was aware of his friend's replying comments, but he didn't actually put it together in connection with what he thought he was just mulling over to himself.

"Nothing about this makes any sense," he said for what was probably the 10th time, he was barely even aware he'd said it once so he definitely hadn't been keeping count. "Anybody who could sneak in here past both of us and stay hidden through the span of five planets, does _not_ have something wrong in their head..." he sighed and added, "I can't dump her on some farming planet, she's too smart to be stuck there the rest of her life." His body slightly jerked as if a sudden chill ran through him, still remembering his conversation with Mundo. That guy clearly didn't think much of the doctor they'd pulled out of the wreckage, but after they talked, Han wouldn't bet money that the patrol agent was any better, just a different variety of scumball. He sighed again in frustration, "There's nowhere _to_ dump her, I don't know anyone that can take her, and she _sure_ as hell can't stay here."

He was getting another headache. It wasn't often he found himself questioning how he got stuck in a certain situation, most times he _knew_ how it happened, though a lot of those times he tried to convince himself it was through no fault of his own even though a nagging voice in the back of his head, and a much louder wookiee howling at him, always said otherwise, but this one left him at odds looking for an answer. _Any_ answer. Unfortunately none were coming to him. He was the kind of guy who could always figure a way out of a mess, but he was coming up empty on this one.

* * *

Gwynplaine moved back in her seat and grimaced at the food set out before her, "What's that?"

"Dinner," Han answered shortly. "You'll eat it, and you'll like it."

She made another face and responded, "I'll eat it, but I won't like it."

During the flight, all kinds of things had run through Han Solo's mind, about if he didn't find some way to get rid of this new passenger soon. The _Falcon_ was usually stocked with two months' worth of food, merely having her aboard for whatever amount of time they did already cut into their supplies, and that was assuming nothing major happened. He wouldn't have had a problem if she was just going to be riding with them for a day, or two, but that didn't look too likely now. At any other time he would be only too happy to dump her the first time they docked somewhere, but knowing what he did, that was the one thing he _couldn't_ do, and he hated it, and hated himself for it. He told himself he was _not_ getting involved in something that wasn't his business, it just happened that as long as this kid was on his ship, she was a passenger, therefore, that made it his business, and that's all the more interest he had in it, finding some place to unload her...that didn't happen to involve farms or some shady back alley deal. That wasn't getting involved in something that didn't concern him, it was just common sense. He was a lot of things, but there were some things he wouldn't do.

He came out of his thoughts and watched Gwynplaine as she picked at the food, there was something strange about the whole thing as she broke it up into tiny pieces and put them in her mouth one by one instead of biting it, she hardly seemed to chew and constantly moved her hand over the corners of her mouth. He'd never seen anybody eat like that, but he was damned if he was going to ask any questions. All he wanted was to have this whole thing over with, deliver the weapons, get paid, find somebody who could take this kid off his hands, and get back to business as usual. He was a smuggler, not a babysitter.

* * *

Han heard Chewie grunt something and felt the wookiee jabbing him in the side with one of his fingers, it jolted him awake and he hadn't even realized he'd fallen asleep, he stammered half coherently "Who-wa-wa-wha...I can see where I'm going!" and jolted erect in his seat before his eyes even focused and he realized they'd already landed some time earlier.

They'd lost enough time running back and forth from one planet to the next that there was no way they were going to be able to drop off their cargo before the next day, and Han was too tired to try and prove otherwise, so they found a small moon to park on, where hopefully no one and nothing would bother them, least of all until they left.

It took a couple minutes for him to remember where they were, and while he tried to figure that out he yawned and asked Chewie, "Where's the kid?"

Chewbacca answered, and Han did a double take and turned in his seat to see Gwynplaine was asleep strapped in the seat behind his in the cockpit. He definitely didn't remember her being there before he fell asleep, and he was too tired to ask, but somewhere in the recesses of his mind he knew if she was strapped in they must've had a bumpy trip, and she must've fallen asleep before they actually touched down. He moaned quietly as he stood up and stretched his stiff legs, then stepped around to Gwynplaine's seat and shook her shoulder to wake her up, but she hardly even budged, it was only because she was breathing that he was even sure she was still alive.

"Hey kid," he tried again, "wake up."

The red haired girl moaned softly but wasn't roused.

"Hoo boy," he commented as he could easily see this being a barren source of amusement. He unstrapped her and pulled her to her feet and half walked, half pushed her out of the cockpit. The kid was practically a dead weight as he walked her back to the lounge and got her situated in one of the bunks. It was only then that she opened her eyes a slit and groggily asked, "Wha'happened?"

"Go to sleep," he told her.

She closed her eyes, then turned on one side, then her eyes opened again and she asked him, a little more coherently, "Whose bed is this?"

"Nobody's, go to sleep," he repeated.

Gwynplaine did as she was told, her eyes closed again and she rolled onto her back. Han turned to go, then he saw something and turned back to get a better look.

The angle of the light must've just been right because he'd been looking at the kid all day and hadn't noticed anything. Now he could see it, just barely, two pale lines that started at the corners of her mouth and worked their way back, curling up towards her cheeks. Scars. Old scars. Not like anything he'd ever seen before, but then again what did that prove? It could've been anything, it could've been from a rocket sled accident when she was little, those kinds of childhood injuries happened all the time.

He'd already forgotten about it by the time he returned to the room where their bunks were kept and promptly fell face first on his. He'd come across a lot of obstacles in his line of work, but he'd never had a problem like this. Two actually, first thing first he still had to get this shipment delivered and get the money he still owed Jabba for dumping his load, _then_ he had to figure out what to do with that kid. Either of these on their own he could handle no problem, but both at the same time, just thinking about it was giving him another headache. There _had_ to be an easier way for a smuggler to make a living, and this thought streamed through his head, as someone who had nearly gotten killed more times than he could remember. Right now he wished he was back in any one of those situations instead of the current one he was stuck in.


	4. Chapter 4

"What about that waitress at the cantina on...what was the name...Tarfut, what about her?" Han asked Chewbacca the next day as they resumed their flight.

The Wookiee chattered as he cocked his head to the side.

"No not the one with 50 eyes, the one with the two mouths," Han answered, and added half nostalgically, "interesting girl."

Chewie grunted his answer with an accompanying shake of his head.

"Yeah," Han reluctantly conceded, "Can't really see her being mother material." He thought again, "what about that nurse at the sick bay on Flurm?"

Chewbacca howled his response, which didn't answer Han's question but instead posed another one.

"Yes that time I lost," Han nearly whispered the word, "that barfight. Nobody needs to know that part."

The response he got from his friend was also one he didn't want to hear, or relive.

He absently scratched a spot on the back of his head and came to the conclusion, "That's all of the women I can think of, so who else could we dump this kid on?"

The conversation was promptly broken up by alarms going off as the ship jerked from side to side, there had been no warnings, there was nothing showing in their path, Han was glancing from one radar to another, there was nothing out there, but it felt like something had definitely hit them.

Gwynplaine haphazardly stumbled into the cockpit and yelled over the noise, "What's going on?!"

"I don't know!" he answered in a rare moment of complete and panicked honesty, without even turning his head he told her, "get strapped in and I'll find out!"

He struggled to bring the ship back under control, all the while looking everywhere to see what had hit them, but all the screens and monitors turned up nothing. As far as he could tell, they were completely alone out there, but he wasn't going to risk traveling any longer than they absolutely had to in their present condition without knowing what happened, so he found a small planet nearby to land.

Chewy grunted something that even to anyone who didn't understand Wookiee, sounded ominous.

"Yeah," Han answered with some hesitation, "it is Pompeia."

"What's that mean?" Gwynplaine asked.

"It means we're not staying any longer than we have to," he answered as he lowered the boarding ramp. "Let's find out what's going on."

* * *

"What happened?" Gwynplaine repeated as Han and Chewbacca examined the damage to the ship.

"Something sideswiped us," Han answered as he felt along where some of the deflector shields had been ripped off, in the process, so had some of the ship's very exterior and a few circuits to boot.

"How? You said-"

"I know what I said," he snapped at her.

Chewbacca grunted.

"Yeah," Han replied defeatedly, "I guess it'd make sense someone else out there could jam their signals so we couldn't pick them up either." He grimaced at the damage and told his friend, "Go get the tools and we'll see if we can't do a patch job to get out of here. We'll give it a more thorough job later." He turned around and just about fell over Gwynplaine who stood right in front of him.

The redhead looked up at the smuggler and asked earnestly, "Can I help?"

Han Solo was very close to the end of his rope, and it showed by him answering with, "If you want to help, go find something poisonous to play with."

Gwynplaine didn't verbally respond but she put one balled up hand on her side and raised one eyebrow defiantly.

"Just stay out of the way," he told her in a slightly calmer tone.

Without a word, she walked around him and wandered away from the ship. He turned his head long enough to call after her, "Don't go far and don't get lost!" to himself he immediately asked, "Why did I say that?"

Chewbacca growled something at Han as he returned with the tools they'd need to do a rush job to get the ship fixed up enough to get out of there.

"I wouldn't worry, the odds of one of the volcanoes on this planet erupting while we're here are...well we'll be quick," Han said.

His big hairy friend grunted a snide comment as they got to work.

"What do you mean I should've let Lando keep the ship and I take the cigarette lighter?" Han demanded to know.

* * *

"Okay, Chewie," Han rapped his fist against the replacement shield they put on, "that ought to do it until we can actually stop somewhere, get the stuff put back and..." he turned around and looked around and didn't see Gwynplaine anywhere, "Now where the hell did that kid get to?"

Chewbacca made an uncertain sound.

Han pocketed his blaster and said, "I'll go look for her." Part of him was hoping he didn't find her.

Pompeia was known for many things, at times it could be a beautiful planet, parts of it were covered in tall green trees, other parts had lost them over the years, and some that remained were twisted and bent and scorched white. It could also be a dangerous planet...and Han found himself quickening his steps as he realized how much more dangerous it could be for a kid who'd never been there and didn't know about the hazard zones that were spread all over the land.

"Hey kid!" he called as he made his way through a heavily wooded area, looking every which way as he ran, "Kid!" He tried to listen for any response, but all he could hear was his heart pounding in his ears. Why hadn't he warned her about the-

A noise came out of nowhere, part of it sounded like somebody moaning, and the other part...Han couldn't identify it right away, but he knew it was something he'd heard before, but not often, he couldn't place it, but he knew it was bad, and he felt like the blood racing through his veins had turned into a million pins and spikes jabbing him.

"Kid!" he tried to follow the sound though it was already dying, he came into a clearing, and he stopped, his feet felt like they were welded into place, and the blood ran cold in his body at what he saw.

Gwynplaine was crouched down on the ground beside another body, a bloody body laying face down, and she stood over it gripping a knife in both hands, it was covered in blood up to the handle. She looked at Han but otherwise didn't do anything: move, make a sound, anything.

Finally Han felt his feet move, but slowly, dragging along the dirt ground, as if he had weights tied to them. He could see the man was dead, he could tell it was one of the planet's locals, human, or human-esque rather, similar to them, but not quite, the inhabitants all had a dark leathery type of skin and anytime they moved they scurried like animals which made them hard targets to hit with a blaster. And it looked like this one had been stabbed several times in the back, his blood pooled out of the holes and covered his body and the ground beneath him as well. Han looked at Gwynplaine, still crouched down, both hands on the knife, both hands covered in blood, and he felt like throwing up as he exclaimed in shock and disbelief, "You're a barbarian!"

The redheaded girl finally blinked, and with a partially stoic, largely unreadable expression on her face, said simply, "Thank you", as if she thought it was a compliment.

"What the hell did you _do_?" he demanded to know as he stepped over towards her, but didn't touch her.

Gwynplaine moved one foot to steady herself as she stood up, still clutching the knife, and answered, "He was going to shoot you...I was supposed to just let him?"

Han looked down again and saw a blaster laying beside the dead man. So, she was telling the truth, but still...it wasn't that Han was particularly moral about killing people who would kill him first, he'd done it a few times, but always quick, neat, with a blaster, it was a clean kill, this...he could hardly even stand to look at this, or at her.

"Where..." he couldn't even ask the question at first, he tried again, "Where did you get the knife?"

"It's mine," she answered nonchalantly, "gypsies are notoriously unwelcome people, I need _something_ to defend myself."

So many different things were surging through Han Solo's body at that time he wasn't even sure which end was up. He lashed out and grabbed Gwynplaine by the back of her shirt with enough force she spun around in his grip, with his other hand he grabbed her by the back of her pants and forcefully walked her through the clearing as she yelled and screamed and struggled in protest. He still remembered his way around the planet fairly well, and when he saw what he was looking for, he tightened his two handed grip on the girl, picked Gwynplaine up so her feet left the ground, and threw her into a hot spring. She hit the water with a deafening splash and her whole body submerged for a few seconds before she floated to the top. There was no way she was setting foot back on his ship until the blood was washed away, he didn't want it touching any part of his ship, he didn't want it touching him. Gwynplaine choked and sputtered and rubbed the water out of her eyes, she looked at Han but said nothing, she was chest deep in the water and slowly walked over to the edge and pulled herself out.

"Why's the water so hot?" she asked. For no more than she'd been in there, her skin was bright pink.

"There's a lot of volcanic activity on this planet," Han told her, "that's _one_ of the reasons why we're not sticking around."

There was a noise as someone else came through to the clearing and they both turned and saw Chewbacca heading their way, he howled when he saw Han.

"I found her, we can leave now," he said, "and not a minute too soon. This planet's more trouble than it's worth, between the volcanoes, the natives, and the-"

Before he could finish that sentence, a howling, deafening wind came up out of nowhere and blew with enough force that both humans struggled to stay on their feet. Chewbacca's howls were drowned out by the wind that was screaming like a banshee, the Wookiee managed to stay upright through the gusts, but not without his own difficulty. Han and Gwynplaine had been knocked to the ground and the wind continued to whip through their hair, their clothes, it felt like it would start ripping their skin open at any second. And then, after a few minutes, just as suddenly and inexplicably as it had started, it was over.

"-wind storms," Han finally finished his sentence as he got to his feet.

Gwynplaine also stood up, and very cynically commented, "I'm dry now, can we go?"


	5. Chapter 5

"Come here."

Han hadn't taken his eyes off the scenery straight ahead since they'd left the planet, somehow still he'd addressed Gwynplaine exactly when she poked her head into the cockpit, like he had eyes in the back of his head. To further this idea even more, the young girl had wordlessly pointed to herself in question, only to be met with a determined, " _You_ , come over here."

Without a word but a slight tensing of the shoulders, she walked into the room and over to his line of vision.

"Sit down," he said, equally firmly.

She looked at the two sets of seats and asked, "Front, or back?"

"Get over here," he said for an answer.

Hesitantly, Gwynplaine sat down in the seat usually occupied by Chewbacca.

"I want to get something straight before we go any further," Han told her. He only turned his head enough to glance at her through one eye and told her, "I'm not mad at you. I know the Pompeians, they're a bloodthirsty bunch, and if they'd had the chance, they would've killed all of us. That area's always been the uninhabited side of the planet, that's _why_ we landed there...but apparently, at least one of them made the trek over to the other side...and if there was one, there could've been more...there's more than one reason why we never stay long there, we only stop when we have to." He knew there were two words he should've added to that whole statement, but they wouldn't come. He felt very strange at the prospect of thanking a child for saving his life.

Gwynplaine could tell the conversation wouldn't go any further than that and merely replied, "Yes, captain."

Oh the irony. Han always referred to himself as a captain when he spoke to other people, and he'd thought he'd like being addressed as such by someone he was transporting, but it just gave him a weird feeling under his skin.

"Look, just forget the captain stuff," he told her, "my name's Han Solo. Okay?"

She looked at him and only nodded in response.

It was another minute before she asked him, "Where are we going?"

It dawned on him that the last couple days, he and Chewie had talked _around_ her about their cargo to deliver, but he'd never actually explained it to her. "We're hauling cargo to a buyer over on Hexlan, we were supposed to be there yesterday."

"You're a smuggler," she didn't ask, she simply stated.

He glanced over at her and said with a hint of amusement, "Now you're starting to get it."

"What're you smuggling?" Gwynplaine asked with earnest curiosity.

"None of your business, and don't bother looking for it, you won't find it."

"Just because I was with the gypsies doesn't mean I'm a thief," she replied defensively.

"Not saying you are, also not condemning it, I stole a lot of stuff before I started smuggling," he told her, "the pay's better this way."

Gwynplaine looked at him and asked, "So how long will it take to get to Hexlan?"

"If we keep on at our current speed, we should be there tomorrow," Han said, "assuming nothing else goes wrong."

"What're the odds of that?" she asked.

He scowled at her through one eye and replied, "Don't get smart with me."

There was silence between them for a minute before she asked him, "Can I get something to eat?"

The question was so random it actually took him a few seconds to realize what she'd said. He shrugged, "Yeah, sure, go ahead."

Gwynplaine got up from her seat, Han heard her leave and also heard Chewbacca as he entered the cockpit.

"I'm still trying to figure out who we could leave her with," Han told the wookiee. "I've gone over about everybody I know...the only person left I can think of who she might be okay with is Lando."

Chewbacca grunted a response to that idea.

"She'd probably be okay with him, I mean she's too young for him to-"

Another grunt cut off his sentence, Han felt himself slide down in his seat a bit as he admitted, "Yeah, that's the problem with kids, they keep growing." He mulled it over for a minute and an amusing thought came to him, "Still, it'd be funny, first I cheat him out of the _Falcon_ , fairly, mind you."

Chewie grunted in response.

"And then stick him with that kid..." Han was practically beaming from ear to ear as he said, "It'd almost be worth doing just to see the look on Lando's face."

The wookiee howled disapprovingly.

"I said _almost_ ," Han said.

* * *

Han was never so relieved to touch down on a planet as the next day when he and Chewie reached Hexlan. On the way there they'd encountered two meteor showers and just about hit a black hole. He was tired, hungry, sore, and if one more thing went wrong he felt like he was going to snap and kill someone. Leaving the ship, he felt a renewed sense of pending relief, they were so close to delivering the shipment, he was so close to getting paid, one step closer to getting one huge angry slug off his back, and the atmosphere itself felt very welcoming. He knew Hexlan well, he'd done a lot of business with people there over the years, it was the perfect place to get lost, life forms of all kinds from all other planets ran amok there, so much so it was impossible to keep track of who or where anybody was. Every time he came there he felt he was in good company. Smugglers, pirates, every kind of outlaw in the galaxy holed up there from time to time and got lost in the crowd.

"So who's picking up the shipment?" Gwynplaine asked as the three of them entered a bar.

"A guy named Voldo, he's the middle man for the guy actually paying for the shipment."

"So why're we meeting him in a bar?" Gwynplaine asked. "Why not take it direct?"

"A matter of trust," Han answered.

The redheaded girl looked at him and asked, "Trust among smugglers?"

He ignored her question and looked around for any sign of Voldo, it wasn't easy because he had every species in the galaxy to look at and try to find him in the crowd. But so far it looked like he hadn't shown up.

Han felt somebody poking him in the ribs and he looked and saw it was Gwynplaine.

"What?" he asked curtly.

"I want a drink," she said simply.

"Then _get_ a drink!" In the time it took him to say those four words, while he didn't actually see Gwynplaine move, she was suddenly six inches back from where she was and her whole body tensed at his outburst. He was unfazed by it and added to his snide remark, "What're you telling _me_ for?"

Without a word, the visibly shaken girl turned and headed for the bar.

If Han Solo was able to shut off the conscience inside of his head, he was not able to shut out the one that was 7 feet tall with hot breath blowing in his ear as he had to reluctantly agree, Chewbacca made a good point. This was his kind of place and his kind of people, despite the overwhelming number of cutthroats and lowlives thrown in the mix, and it wasn't any kind of place to bring a kid. His dumb luck, he was the only one there who had.

Han turned to Chewie and told him, "Stay with the girl while I find Voldo."

Chewbacca gave a couple small grunts as he nodded. Han started making his way through the crowd, looking for a familiar face.

"Solo!"

The voice was familiar too. Han forced a friendly smile as he approached the green alien who stood about as tall as him, wearing a striped orange and white uniform, whose body was scaly like a reptile's and whose head was shaped like a giant crown of broccoli . "Voldo, just the man I wanted to see. How's Khan?"

"Eagerly awaiting the shipment," Voldo intertwined his scaly green fingers, "I trust you had no problem bringing it?"

"Oh I had my fair share of problems," Han flatly replied, "but not with the shipment. 100 blasters, 100 rifles, per our agreement."

"Excellent," Voldo's black eyes seemed to light up at this news.

"Where's the money?" Han demanded in his usual businessman way.

"Same old Solo, you never change, do you?"

"Nope," he answered bluntly. "Where is it?"

"You'll get it, when we get the weapons," Voldo answered.

"Then we'll meet back at the _Falcon_ ," Han said.

"We'll be waiting," Voldo said, a hint of ominosity in his tone.

"We?" Han asked. "Khan made the trip himself?"

"Ohhh nooo," Voldo shook his large bizarrely shaped head, "He sent a few of his men to make sure the shipment was collected in full and there were no...discrepancies."

"You can count them yourself, it's all there," Han leaned over and got in the green creature's face as he said with a hint of his own ominosity, "The money better all be there, as agreed."

"But of course," Voldo said as he turned and walked away.

Han felt like a weight was off of him, he was so close to getting the money now. He turned and saw Chewie standing by the bar, hovering over Gwynplaine who was seated at the bar halfway through a mug of beer.

"Come on!" he called over to them, "let's go!"

Both heads turned towards him. Gwynplaine took another swig of her drink and said as she stood up and ran the back of her hand over her mouth, "I didn't finish my drink."

"Never mind," Han said as he flipped a coin to the bartender, "With the money I'm about to make, you can buy out the whole tap. We gotta get to the ship and unload the goods. They're gonna be waiting on us."

* * *

Han had just made his way down the loading ramp when he saw Voldo arrive with several other of Khan's hired goons, who touched down in several large hovercrafts to transport the weapons in.

The green alien approached the smuggler and inquired, "Where's the merchandise?"

"Where's my money?" Han asked.

Voldo laughed. "You always insist on playing these funny little games."

"That's because I'm a funny kind of guy," Han said lightly, then in a blunter tone he added, "I don't like getting stiffed for my services."

"First the weapons, then the credits," Voldo insisted.

Han shook his head, "Nothing doing. I see what I risked my neck for or I'm taking Khan's shipment and finding another buyer, he'd bite your head off sooner than he would mine when you come back empty handed."

"Very well," Voldo replied, "as a show of good faith, I'll hand over _part_ of your fee, and you get the rest when we get the weapons."

"5,000 credits up front or I'm leaving," Han told the shrewd creature.

"You drive a hard bargain, Solo."

"That's because I'm the best," he remarked.

He kept one eye on Voldo and used the other one to count the money that had been handed to him, then he turned his head just enough to holler back towards the ship, "Alright, Chewie, bring 'em out."

The next half hour was spent with Chewbacca and Gwynplaine dragging crates down the ramp which were collected by Khan's people, loaded into the hovercrafts and every so often one lifted off to take the goods back, unload, then turn around and come back for another load.

"I trust Khan will be pleased," Han commented, "as usual. Now, the rest of the money."

"Not so fast," Voldo said, "there's still a matter of 20 more blasters before our deal is settled."

"Here's the last of it!" Gwynplaine called. Han and Voldo turned to see her inching her way down the ramp pushing a crate.

"There, now the money," Han turned back to Voldo.

Gwynplaine pushed the crate past the two businessmen and over to Voldo's associates for them to take.

"Solo! You've been holding out on me!"

"The hell I have, 100 blasters, 100 rifles, exactly," Han replied defensively.

"Not the weapons," Voldo shook his head, "The girl."

Han turned back and looked at Gwynplaine, not getting what he meant.

The last crate of weapons was collected, loaded, and the rest of Khan's henchmen took off to deliver the rest of the shipment. Now it was just Voldo, who wouldn't stop staring at Gwynplaine, who looked at him briefly, then looked towards Han for some explanation of what was going on.

"What about her?" Han finally asked, feeling totally lost.

"Where..." Voldo's pitch black eyes seemed to light up at the sight of Gwynplaine, "did you find a specimen like that?"

"Oh you might just say we had a run-in."

Something changed in the alien's demeanor, he looked like a starving man feasting his eyes upon a prime dinner.

"It's so...rare," Voldo said, a slight hissing sound forming with every word he spoke, "to encounter a female type like that this side of the galaxy. I want her, Solo."

Han still wasn't getting what was going on, but he didn't have to look over to the kid to tell Voldo, "Sorry, the lady's got a prior engagement."

The green scaly alien hissed like a snake about to strike. "I want the girl, Solo, I can make it well worth your time."

It didn't escape Han's attention that Gwynplaine was very slowly inching her way over towards him, he didn't actually see her move, but he was aware she was gradually making her way over to him, until she stood behind him and he felt her hands grabbing the back of his belt, clinging to him as if for protection. The same way she'd done it when they landed on Ar-ra, now he understood why she did it.

"The rest of the money you're owed, I would be very happy to double it, in exchange for the girl," Voldo told the smuggler.

"Sorry, no sale."

"Don't be a fool, Solo. You cannot afford to pass up an opportunity like this."

He felt the air being strangled out of him as Gwynplaine subconsciously tightened her grab on him. He wrangled her hands free from his torso and told the wookiee, "Chewie, take the kid back on the _Falcon_ and wait for me. I'll be there momentarily."

Chewbacca grunted in response as he came up towards them, grabbed Gwynplaine and escorted her back onto the ship.

"You'd really give up a chance to make 15,000 credits," Voldo said questioningly, "you're a damn fool, Solo."

"And you're even lower than I originally thought, and I didn't think that was possible," Han replied.

One of Voldo's scaly clawed hands grabbed a fistful of Han's vest, then his head exploded. Han watched the body fall to the ground, then he raised his smoking blaster as if just realizing for the first time that he had it. Instinctively he felt through Voldo's pockets for the rest of the money, he found it, then turned around and ran for the _Falcon_.

"Get strapped in and let's get out of here," he told the others as he came up the ramp, "I have a feeling we're not going to be invited back here anytime soon."


	6. Chapter 6

"Why did you do it?"

Han stared straight ahead as he piloted the ship and played dumb, "Why did I do what?"

Gwynplaine entered the cockpit and went over to him, "He was going to pay you for me."

"Uh huh," Han said simply.

"A lot of money?"

"Uh huh."

"Why didn't you do it?" she asked him in earnest confusion.

Han drew in a long inhale and sighed it back out. "First of all, I deal in goods, not people. Secondly, nobody tells me when I'm going to deal on anything. I got paid for the job I agreed to do, that's all the further our business transaction went."

Gwynplaine shook her head, "I don't understand. Now what happens?"

He turned his head enough to look at her, "What do you mean?"

"You said I could come with you until you dropped off the shipment...you did...so now where do I go?" she asked him.

He turned his head the rest of the way to make full eye contact with the girl and he told her, "I'm working on that. You opposed to keeping company with me and the big hairball a while longer?"

She shook her head.

"Then it's settled."

"Thank you."

The words were so quiet he almost missed them, but they were loud enough that it caught him off guard and he felt his eyes bulge to their fullest size. He recovered from the shock after a few seconds, and all he said in response was, "We'll be coming up on Aalderon soon, you ever been there?"

She shook her head.

"We're gonna stop there for a while, power up the ship, get something to eat, be a change of scenery," he said.

* * *

Aalderon was mostly a desert planet, not as bad as some out there like Tatooine with its twin suns, but it was offsetting to a lot of life forms who would rather take their chances making it to the next planet. There was a small stretch of land on Aalderon though that was an oasis so to speak, civilization, you could get anything you needed, get your ship serviced, get something to eat, a beer, buy clothes, weapons, anything you needed, the locals turned a tidy little profit.

The three travelers were shown in to a dimly lit eatery and to a table currently housing just a pitcher of water and four glasses. From there they had a good view of the floor show over in the corner, three female dancers of various species dressed in see-through clothes dancing with large snakes draped over their necks, every so often one would curl the snake up and toss it in the air and catch it. How nobody died during the act, or even got bitten, was anybody's guess.

Han heard a strange sound over the music playing accompanying the act and looked around trying to figure out what it was. Then he turned towards Gwynplaine when he realized that's where the sound was emanating from.

All she said on the subject was, "I got stomach static, are we eating tonight or not?"

The place was busy and Han had to look around to find someone to take their order. Finally a waiter came up carrying a flaming shish-kebab for another table, stopping to talk to them. Gwynplaine had just started to sip her glass of water when she saw this, spit out her drink and exclaimed, "Hey-hey! The meat's on fire!" and tossed the contents of her glass towards it, but missed the shish-kebab entirely and instead doused Han Solo, who shot up sputtering and fuming. When she saw this, the redheaded girl sank down in her chair, just before Han tried to reach over the table and grab her, but he was reined back by Chewbacca who forced him back in his seat.

Gwynplaine slowly pulled herself back up in her chair and merely offered, "Sorry."

Han picked up one of the large cloth napkins and dried off the best he could. Gwynplaine picked up the large pitcher of water and poured herself another glass. The same waiter came back, carrying another, even larger flaming shish-kebab and told the pilot, "Your food will be out shortly, sir."

"Thank you."

Gwynplaine looked up and shot up in her seat, "The meat's on fire again." This time she grabbed the pitcher and chucked the whole contents towards it, but missed once again and this time soaked Han Solo down to the bones. As he jolted to his feet yelling and cursing, Gwynplaine sunk so far down in her chair she about fell on the floor.

* * *

It didn't take long for them to wear out their welcome in the eatery, so before they were thrown out, they got a couple frog-dog bags to go and headed back to the ship, where once there, Han changed into a dry set of clothes, and by that time his temper seemed to have cooled down.

"Where's the kid?" he asked when he returned to the lounge and just saw Chewie there.

He heard a sound behind him and turned to see Gwynplaine poke her head into the room as she asked cautiously, "Is it safe to come in?"

"Yeah sure," he answered.

She entered the room and stood a few feet away from him and just looked at him. Han expected something from her but when a moment passed and she said nothing, he looked at her and asked, " _What_?"

"I'm sorry," she finally said, a hint of embarrassment visible in her face, "I'd never seen anyone do that before, I didn't know the food was _supposed_ to be on fire."

A few seconds passed before a small, involuntary laugh made its way up from Han Solo's throat, a few seconds after that he was steadily laughing, obviously trying not to but failing. He composed himself and responded, "It's okay, kid, no permanent damage done, I think we'll be allowed to go back there _some_ day."

* * *

After dinner, Han headed to the cockpit and got them off the ground and soon out of Aalderon's atmosphere altogether. After a while Gwynplaine entered the cockpit, went over to him and asked, "So where're we going now?"

"Gotta find somebody," he said simply.

"Who?"

"That's a long story."

"Why?" she asked.

"That's an even longer story," Han answered. "Look kid, we got a long flight ahead of us, why don't you head on back and play Dejarik with Chewie?"

"I don't know how," she answered simply.

"He'll show you...just don't try and beat him, wookiees are sore losers. We were in this bar once and he ripped this guy's arm out of his socket for beating him."

"That a fact?" she asked in an unfazed tone.

He merely nodded in return.

"This should be interesting," Gwynplaine remarked as she left the cockpit.

* * *

It had been smooth flying for a while, so Han set the ship for automatic pilot and got up to stretch his legs and see what was going on, the long bouts of silence had him curious. He headed to the lounge and was more than mildly surprised to see Gwynplaine and Chewbacca still at the hologame table.

"How's it going?" he asked.

Gwynplaine didn't even look up from the board as she answered, "I've been playing this stupid game for over two hours and it still doesn't make any sense to me."

"I thought you said you were raised by gypsies."

She turned her head and looked at him, puzzled, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"They rig these games and make a fortune off of them."

And he ought to know. He'd lost enough money to pay Jabba five times what he owed him, trying to prove that somebody, not just somebody but he himself, could beat the gypsies at their own games.

"That was their trade, not mine," Gwynplaine answered.

"So I'm starting to figure out," Han responded. In a moment of pure frustration at the whole situation he cynically asked the girl, "Is there _anything_ you're capable of doing right?"

She gave no verbal answer and her eyes slowly looked down towards the table instead of at him and all she did was give a small shrug of both shoulders as an answer. That alone would've been enough to tell Han that he screwed up, as if he needed that fact reinforced, he got it in the form of a short grunting snort from the wookiee seated right behind him.

Gwynplaine got up from the other side of the table and said half under her breath, "I want to go home...I wish I had one to go to," and with that she walked out of the lounge.

The silence that remained after she exited was heavy for a moment, broken only by Han saying to Chewie, "Don't say it."

The wookiee let out a short sound that from any other life form might sound like a whine, but wookiees didn't whine, and anyone who said otherwise was bound to get their arms ripped out of their socket.

"I know," Han replied as he crossed one foot over the other. One side of his face tensed up as he gritted his teeth. "I don't know what to do, Chewie, I don't know anybody who'll take her." It went without saying that his consciences, the one in his head and the big furry one who'd rode with him for several years, wouldn't allow him to just dump the kid off somewhere and run, and that especially limited his options. For the first time in a long time he was starting to wish he hadn't made quite so many enemies in his life, or he might be able to think of someone who could take the girl.

He found himself deep in thought and only realized after a moment that he was absently rubbing his hand against his jaw.

"Mundo said there were places she'd pull in a good price despite being too young," he remembered, "And Voldo was willing to double what Khan was paying me for the weapons just to get her." He was quiet for a minute and shook his head, "It doesn't make sense. If she's so valuable, why was she sold to that gypsy ship? And if she's so valuable, how come there's nobody who _can_ take her?"

Chewbacca snorted and shook his head.

"Something's not right here," Han agreed, "but I don't know what the answer is."

He was drawn out of his own thoughts by a knowing grunt from the wookiee.

"Yeah yeah," Han reluctantly agreed, "I'll go find her."

* * *

Han was starting to consider the possibility he was losing his mind. He'd gone over the ship twice and he hadn't found Gwynplaine anywhere, he'd checked back with Chewie and the wookiee hadn't seen her either. He'd gone through every room, every conceivable place that a person could...

He stopped in his tracks as the answer came to him and slapped himself in the forehead. Of course. He doubled back to the main corridor, dropped down on his knees and opened up the floor panel for one of the secret compartments. Gwynplaine looked up at him, a blank expression in her eyes, she said nothing.

"Get out of there," he said, not angrily, but more like he was too tired to fight with her than just mere nonchalance to the situation.

Gwynplaine climbed out of the compartment and said, "If I'd known that these were here when I first got on this ship I could've saved myself a lot of trouble and not about gotten myself killed when we went through that asteroid field."

"If people knew these were here, I'd be out of business," Han replied.

She looked at him and asked, "So now what?"

He didn't have an answer for that either. With a sigh, all he said was, "Look, kid, I'm trying to figure something, but you've got to help me out here, is there anything you know how to do that can point me in a direction what to do with you?"

The redhead seemed to sink into herself and become even smaller as she just shrugged.

Han was starting to feel the situation was hopeless, but he felt a little better finally having the money for this latest haul, there was enough he could put a dent in what he owed Jabba, and he could restock any supplies they got low on what with everything being split three ways for the time being. Maybe because of this, the idea of being stuck with this kid for an undetermined amount of time wasn't as bothersome to him as it was a few days ago. He felt exhausted, like he'd come out of a war zone, but he didn't feel defeated by the current circumstances, and he knew getting mad at the girl wasn't going to help, as tempted as he was.

"I'll be honest, kid, I'm not sure what we're going to do," he told her.

She looked him in the eyes and he could see her mentally bracing herself for what might come next as she asked, "Maybe you'd been better off handing me over to Voldo."

He would've, if he actually thought Chewie would let him live with himself after that, or for that matter, if _he'd_ let himself live with himself, though he still maintained to himself that he was not getting emotionally involved in this matter. Even a bystander on the outside could recognize selling this kid to some piece of scum wasn't an option and neither was abandoning her to fend for herself the first chance he got. It had nothing to do with getting involved in someone else's affairs, it was just common sense to anybody with a brain.

"I'm not giving up," he told her, "I've worked my way out of bigger problems than this. There's an answer somewhere, I just gotta find it."

An alarm going off got both their attention and they both took off running for the cockpit.

"Chewie!" Han spotted the wookiee already there, "What's going on?"

Gwynplaine gritted her teeth until they about broke and pressed her hands against her ears to try and muffle the noise of the alarm. "What's that noise!?"

"We got company!" Han spotted a big angry looking blip on the radar gaining on them. He checked all the monitors to see what it was, and in the midst of the deafening alarm, his eyes bulged slightly as he said in a half whisper, "That's not an imperial cruiser."


	7. Chapter 7

"It's people like this that give space pirates a bad name," Han commented as he and Gwynplaine sat in a dark cold dungeon cell aboard the ship that attacked them.

What had happened was still a bit of a blur, they were rammed, shot at, and then pulled in by the enemy ship's tractor beam. The hatch had been forced open and something had been dropped in that when it exploded it temporarily blinded and deafened everybody. During that time, all three of them had been manhandled and forced off the _Falcon_ and onto the other ship.

Han didn't know how much time had passed but around the time he could start to see lights and hear sounds he was aware of several people screaming in his ear, it took a few minutes for him to realize they were asking questions, asking being a loose term, they were screaming every question in his face and spitting on him in the process. It didn't take long for him to reach the conclusion they had hijacked the wrong ship, literally, based on the demanding interrogations being blared into both ears as he was getting the hell beat out of him, it was obvious they had intended to do this to someone else who would actually have an answer to all those questions. It didn't dawn on them they had the wrong ship and the wrong crew and it didn't do him any good to try and point that out. He and the girl had been thrown into this cell that was so antiquated there were bars on a hinged door that swung when it was unlocked, and the last he knew, they'd hauled Chewbacca off for further interrogation, he almost felt sorry for the poor bastards who had no idea what they'd just gotten themselves into. But that had been a while ago, and everything had been quiet since.

Gwynplaine paced anxiously in the dank cell, she hadn't said a word since they'd been locked in, and as far as Han's memory served, she hadn't been manhandled near like he had. While she paced, Han sat against one of the cold walls and tried to figure what the next move was.

Finally the silence was broken when the kid stopped in her tracks and out of nowhere asked him, "Will they kill the wookiee?"

The question was so unexpected that Han's mind couldn't even think for a minute. He opened his mouth and a single laugh came out, and it was followed by another, and another, and another, every laugh an individual sound in itself and just enough breath in between to distinguish between one and the next, each one got a little bit louder until his chest rose and fell with every single guffawing sound escaping him, to the point he could hardly breathe, his eyes were just about squinted shut and one burned as a stray tear jerked itself loose and slid down the corner of his eye, and were it not for the wall behind him, he would've tipped over and fallen flat on the ground.

It was a good couple minutes before the smuggler was able to compose himself, he took in a couple deep breaths that half came back out through his nose in a snort as he tried to pull himself together. He took in another breath, and was actually able to swallow, before he responded to her, "That's a good one." It was the hardest he ever remembered laughing at anything, and truth be told there weren't a lot of those instances to compare it to.

Gwynplaine didn't see the humor in it and was completely lost as she asked him, "What do you mean?"

"He," Han answered, "is far more likely to kill them. If they don't know what they've gotten themselves into, they're about to find out." He sounded amused as the prospect of it.

"But what do _we_ do?" Gwynplaine asked.

"What is there _to_ do?" he replied. "They took our weapons, there's no way in hell we can bust that lock, there's nothing to do but wait."

"Wait for what?" she asked.

Through the walls of the dungeon they heard a faint sound of a wookiee howling, something crashing and people screaming.

"That, for starters," Han said as he stood up.

The noises carried on for a moment, then got louder, then the door to the room opened, a shaft of light faintly illuminated the corridor outside the cell, and Chewbacca came into view.

"Chewie!" Han reached through the bars on the door to hug his friend, "Am I glad to see you, let's get the hell out of here."

The wookiee grunted and nodded, then Han stood back as he grabbed the bars of the door and letting out a particularly loud howl, ripped it off its ancient hinges.

Gwynplaine ducked around Han and dashed out of the hole where the door used to be and made a beeline through the corridor to try and find her way back to where they'd been brought aboard the ship. As she turned a corner in the main hall and started up a circular set of stairs, she screamed as she felt something grab her. Looking down, she sat somebody had grabbed her by the ankle and was trying to pull her down. It was a young man, who didn't look much older than her, tall and lanky with short dark hair and a boyish face, his voice was slightly older as he told her, "You cannot escape."

She tried to pull her foot out of his grasp but he wouldn't let go. She reached into the boot on her other foot and pulled out the same knife she'd stabbed the Pompeian with, and with her other hand she reached behind her back and pulled a second knife out of its hiding place down the waistband of her pants. Gripping the two at their hilts equally, Gwynplaine raised them up and drove them both down into the opposite sides of the young man's neck at the same time.

* * *

"Where'd the kid go?" Han asked as he and Chewbacca ran through the corridor leading out of the dungeon.

There was a sound like something exploding mingled with Gwynplaine screaming, and Han felt his stomach drop as he followed the sounds, running even faster, dreading what he was going to find.

"Kid!" He turned the corner and found Gwynplaine sprawled over the bottom of a stairwell, her eyes were wide, her hair stood up in spikes and she was screaming hysterically at a body laying a couple feet from her.

"Kid! Are you okay?" Han ran over to see what had happened, and he skidded to a stop when he saw the body smoking. "What the hell?"

It looked like a boy fresh off the moisture farm, he was dressed in black clothes, sprawled on his side, his eye was open and unblinking. Han grabbed his arm and turned him over and stepped back with a grimace as he saw the flesh on the other half of the body had been chewed up, melted, something, it looked like chewed up gum, a hissing sound emanated from the corpse where the flesh was eaten away. Underneath there were wires and circuits that had shorted out, small sparks still jumped off the wires.

"What the _hell_?" he repeated as he looked on at this in a complete stupor.

The only thing that drew him out of his thoughts was the sound of the girl screaming. He went over to her, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet, Gwynplaine continued screaming and struggled as he tried to get her to move. He found himself staring again into the dead but not dead face, it looked so lifelike, like it had been a real boy.

"It's a droid," he said as much for the girl's benefit as to remind himself. He couldn't get over how much like a human it looked.

Gwynplaine became a hysterical dead weight against him, he grabbed her by both arms and shoved her along. He looked down at the droid again and said with a sneer of disgust, "They're making those things too damn realistic these days."

A familiar howl got his attention and he saw Chewbacca heading their way. Just the person he wanted to see.

"Chewie," he forced Gwynplaine along a few feet and told his big furry friend, "Take the girl and get back on the _Falcon_ , I'll be there in a minute."

With apparent ease the wookiee picked the girl up in his arms and took off running for the escape hatch. Han found an open doorway to a familiar looking room and he saw his blaster and a few other things he'd had on him laying on a table in the room. He grabbed his stuff, hopped out the door, took one final look at the droid on the floor, and his attention was drawn to one of the hands, it was still moving. It looked exactly like a human hand, the fingers curled, and uncurled, and curled again.

The hand shorted out with the rest of the mechanical body as Han stomped it to proverbial 'death'. It was no big surprise the kid was screaming her head off, even he could feel his own skin crawling at the little he'd seen of the thing.

He found his way to the hold of the ship where the _Falcon_ had been brought aboard. Quickly making his way onto his own ship, he headed for the cockpit to get them the hell out of there, Chewie and the girl weren't there, but he knew they'd gotten onboard so he went to work starting the ship up. A few minutes later the _Millennium Falcon_ had left the space pirates' ship in the space dust, and with no apparent obstacles dead ahead, he decided it was safe to get up and check on the others.

Entering the lounge, he stumbled on an unusual sight of Chewbacca with his arms wrapped around Gwynplaine to hold her in place as she struggled and screamed.

"I got it, Chewie, let go of her."

With a reluctant howl, the wookiee did as he said and released his hold on the girl. Han grabbed her by the arm to get her attention and tried to talk her down but she was too worked up to listen to reason, she screamed in a higher octave as she broke loose and lashed out and hit him. On a reflex, he retaliated and smacked her hard enough she fell flat on the floor. Then she got quiet.

The whole room was quiet as Han realized what he'd done. Gwynplaine was sprawled on the floor looking up at him, her bottom lip was split and blood was trickling down to her chin.

The words stuck in his throat, two small words that he made a habit of never saying. He never thanked anyone for anything, and he never apologized for anything, even though his mind was screaming at him for it now.

Instead, he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to her feet, and just said, "Come on, let's get that looked at."

* * *

Han had just finished doctoring up Gwynplaine's lip when he saw something and grabbed her hand and noticed the black marks that stained her fingertips.

Suddenly it all fit. He looked at her and said in realization, "You shorted out that droid."

She pulled her hand loose from his grip, she was shaking as she explained, "He grabbed me...I thought he was real...so I..."

Han remembered what happened on Pompeia, "Yeah I have a good idea what you did."

"He exploded," she continued, "I was thrown five feet across the room...I thought he was dead...then his hand moved, it tried to grab me...it looked so real."

"I know," he replied.

He noticed that she was still shaking, and now he was picking up on a strange sound, it took him a few seconds to realize it was her teeth chattering. He picked up his jacket and held it out for her and said, "Here, put this on."

With a slight shiver, she grabbed it and slipped it on. "Thank you." It was so quiet he almost didn't hear it. After a moment she asked him, "So now what?"

"I need to track down somebody and make a payment to them," Han said.

"When?" she asked.

"It's gonna take a few days to get there," he answered. "And in the meantime, it's late, go to sleep."

She opened her mouth and took in a noisy breath that indicated she was going to talk, then she exhaled it back out, and asked him, "Are you going to yell at me again?"

He squinted one eye in puzzlement, "About what?"

"Can I get a drink from the bar first?"

That got a small laugh out of him. "Yeah, sure, go ahead."

* * *

Things had been slow and peaceful for a while, so Han decided it was as good of a time as any to temporarily land and do a more extensive job of repairs to the _Falcon_ after they got sideswiped. He wasn't particularly familiar with the small planet they'd docked on to do it, but it seemed fairly uninhabited which was always a good sign where he was concerned. As they headed down the ramp with the tools in hand, he felt somebody tap him on the shoulder. He turned around and saw Gwynplaine standing behind him.

"Can I help?" she tried again.

"Yeah, sure, just stay out of the way," he told her.

There was enough sunlight left in the planet's day they were able to get a couple more hours' work done on the ship, which left the smuggler confident that it could withstand about anything again, and just in time, the sun was about to set, and he was willing to take his chances on an uncharted planet when he could see what was coming his way, but he wasn't too hot on the idea of staying around after dark when who knew what could be lurking around out there just waiting to-

Han let out a scream as the ground beneath him gave way as soon as his foot made contact with it, and he felt himself falling. Suddenly he was looking down into a massive pit that had been concealed with debris, somebody's idea of a booby trap. It took him a few seconds to realize he was only half in the pit and still hovering over it. He felt somebody holding onto him by the back of his belt and heard a struggling grunt as Gwynplaine tried to pull him back, but for all her efforts he knew she couldn't do it, and any second they were _both_ going to fall a couple hundred feet to sudden doom.

A familiar wookiee roar sent a gush of relief through his body as a few seconds later he felt them _both_ being pulled clear back from the hole. He lay crumbled on the ground for a minute and as he tried to catch his breath he heaved out, "Thanks, Chewie."

As he got to his feet, his ego refused to let this be the final word on the subject. He found himself turning to Gwynplaine and telling her, "Now I know that looked like I fell, but it was all part of the plan."

"Are you trying to convince me of that or yourself?" Gwynplaine replied innocently.

He stabbed a finger towards the _Falcon_ and barked at her, " _GET GOING!_ "

His outburst was enough to draw a startled scream out of the girl as she turned and ran for the boarding ramp.

* * *

Han Solo let out a few Corellian swears he hadn't used in many years as he chucked the bag of credits on the table after he got a chance to count it and realized most of it was gone. He wished Chewbacca hadn't killed all the pirates on that ship so he could have the pleasure of doing it himself. In one night he'd gone from having enough money to start getting himself back in Jabba's good graces and not have to worry about every bounty hunter looking for him, to now he barely had enough to get from one end of the galaxy to the other. Now all the little problems that had been eating at him for the past several days were starting to come back. Not only that, he'd burnt his bridges with Khan when he killed Voldo. Khan was a shrewd businessman, and losing some of his men might be part of the cost of business, but a guy like that would not understand wasting someone making a sizeable offer for a woman.

"That stupid kid," he grumbled half to himself, "If it wasn't for her none of this would've happened."

He played it all back in his head. If it hadn't been for that annoying stowaway, he could've gotten to Hexlan on time, gotten the weapons delivered as agreed, gotten paid as agreed, left the door open for future dealings with Khan, happily been on his way, already gotten to the other side of the galaxy, never run into the space pirates, kept his full profit, and been able to start paying Jabba back. But no, that girl had to decide she'd sneak onboard and hitch a ride out of Ar-ra, and that's where his problems had really started. He should've left her there as soon as they doubled back and touched down. He still could've made the delivery on time, and wouldn't have had any of these problems on his hands to deal with.

Chewbacca's grunting howl brought him out of his thoughts, he opened his eyes and only then realized he'd closed them. With a sigh, he silently conceded that his friend was right, no matter how much he wanted to blame what happened on that girl, not only was getting mad at her not going to solve anything, but he just didn't have the energy to waste on it. He could curse her a million times in his head, but he was too exhausted to actually give breath to any of them. It wasn't her fault. He'd seen what she was facing back there, he wouldn't have stayed either, they were the only ship heading out, of course she'd escape on it, and it wasn't her fault he was too stupid to ditch her the first chance he got. He was stuck with her, now he had to figure out what to do with her, and he wasn't any closer to an answer there than he was when they started.

Speaking of...he turned in his seat and looked around, and saw Gwynplaine slumped over the hologame table asleep.

The smuggler dragged his tired bones out of his seat, forced himself to march over to the table, grabbed Gwynplaine by the arms and pulled her to her feet and walked her over to the bunks and got her settled on the one she'd been using since her first night with them.

He looked at her for a minute, and wasn't sure how, but she seemed to get even younger when she was asleep. She was already too young to be bouncing around the galaxy in his company, but when her eyes and her mouth were shut and she wasn't on her guard, more years seemed to just fall off, she was genuinely a pup.

A sigh escaped him before he realized he was the one even making the noise. He really had no idea what he was going to do. Absently he placed a hand on her shoulder that was still clad in his jacket.

A startled gasp escaped Gwynplaine's mouth and she half shot up in the bunk and was looking around even though her eyes were barely open, "What is it? What's going on?"

Han drew his hand back, feeling like an idiot. "False alarm, kid, go back to sleep."

She did, almost instantly. For some reason he still found himself watching her for a few minutes. After a while she rolled over onto her side so her back was facing him. He moved his foot to turn and leave, but something stopped him. He found himself staring at her again.

Gwynplaine's hair was still standing on end in parts from the shock of the droid shorting out, including all the little hairs on the nape of her neck, and now that they were standing up, he could see something.

Just barely, but it was there.

He didn't even turn around, he backed up to the doorway and called out, "Chewie, come in here, be quiet."

Hearing the wookiee's approaching footsteps, he moved forward again so he was only two feet from the bunk. The redheaded kid was still sleeping like the dead.

Chewbacca entered the room and went over to Han, who just stood where he was, and nodded towards the girl, "Chewie, am I seeing things, or is that what I think it is?"

The wookiee looked and made a snorting sound in response.

Right where the hair grew in at the top of Gwynplaine's neck was a small blue mark, a tattoo, two squiggly lines running up parallel, and two running vertical parallel. A tattoo that wasn't common, but he'd seen it before.

"The Vomanor royal family," Han got out in a whisper that could hardly believe it.

The two turned and exchanged a look. Han suddenly felt strange, he was lightheaded, something was pounding like crazy in his chest, he moved unsteadily on his feet as he left the room and headed for the cockpit. As soon as he sat down at the controls, he heard Chewie joining him.

"We're..." the words died on his lips as he still tried to make any sense of this. He sucked in another breath and said more determinedly, "We're turning around...we're going to Alavak and find out what's going on once and for all."


	8. Chapter 8

"I did _not_ make a wrong turn," Han said.

Chewbacca loudly disagreed.

"I did not."

The wookiee grunted in response and shook his head.

"I did _not_ ," he repeated.

The two got in an argument that consisted of Han sniping back, "Not! Did not!" over and over, all of which could just barely be heard over the continual howl from the wookiee. They carried on that way for a couple minutes before it dawned on the pilot that they had company. He stopped arguing with the wookiee and turned to Gwynplaine who had quietly slipped into the cockpit and asked her, "What're you looking at?"

She looked like she'd just woken up, she rubbed one eye as she said in a quiet tone, not groggy but not all there yet, "Do you really _not_ realize that you two sound like an old married couple?"

Chewbacca grunted in response. Han looked at her with a deadpan expression and hardly missing a beat, in a nonchalant voice he asked her, " _Who_ 're you calling old?"

Gwynplaine ignored the question and glancing out the window she asked him, "Where're we going?"

* * *

Alavak was one of the smallest planets in the galaxy, but it was home to one of the most notorious royal families, the Vomanors. Everybody in the galaxy knew _of_ them, few had actually seen them, and most knew to keep their distance from them. Han had been to the planet on a few occasions to do a little business, he'd never been near the palace grounds but he'd gotten a few distant glimpses at the members of the family. An unusual bunch by any and all standards of lifeforms in the universe. They looked so different from everybody else from every other planet, you _knew_ one when you saw one. Among their own physical traits, they were all easily identified by the mark they were all tattooed with. Most commonly the family members alternated between wearing it on their hand or their forehead for the whole planet to see. They all wore that mark, they carried it from birth, only members of the royal family wore that tattoo. And all members of the royal family stayed on Alavak. Han had always regarded the whole thing as some weird cult, they were all born on that planet, they all died on that planet, as far as he knew the entire extended family all lived in the palace. As far as he knew, nobody ever left, but staying in that corner of the universe, they were able to rule over all inhabitants of the planet as well as throw their royal weight around in the nearest neighboring districts.

You definitely knew a Vomanor when you saw one, there was no mistaking it whatsoever. Every single member of that family was born with the same physical trait. No matter if they were man or woman, short or tall, thin or broad, they were all born with an exaggeratedly long grin on their face that never moved. Where most people's mouths could only expand just past the edges of their nose when they grinned, the Vomanors' permanent grins reached halfway clear up their cheeks. Nobody knew how, but somehow they were capable of eating and perfect diction with those huge sardonic grins with all their teeth exposed and their lips curled back. Aside from that one feature which nobody could overlook, they were all regular looking people, from the face-down the women, what he'd seen of them, were gorgeous, just like human women anywhere, the men, they just looked like men, if you never had to look up at their faces, you'd never know, from the neck down they looked just like everybody else.

The _Millennium Falcon_ landed on Alavak the next morning. The three occupants of the ship departed it and found themselves in a mangle of various lifeforms, the _subjects_ of the planet as it were. They followed a dirt road to a fork, on the right ahead several hundred meters, was the palace, on the left was the town, shops, peddlers, a bar. They went left, and when they reached the town, Han led the others to the bar, which was fairly crowded for that time of the day.

"What're we doing here?" Gwynplaine asked.

"Sit down, get a drink," Han told her, "I'm going to meet a contact." He turned to his friend and told him, "Chewie, stay here and keep an eye on her. I'll be back soon."

The wookiee had a departing comment for him.

"What do you mean don't do anything stupid?" Han asked as he headed for the door, "I know exactly what I'm doing."

* * *

Han's 'contact' was a slightly older man named Deno who in the smuggler's personal opinion, looked more like a humanoid droid than an actual human, tall, skinny but he always held himself tight and stiff, he even walked like a droid. He'd been easy to pick out of the crowd.

"Deno, long time no see."

"Han Solo, what're you smuggling now?" the older man said in a half joking tone.

"Nothing at the moment, I need some information," Han said.

"Uh oh," Deno replied, "anytime you need information, trouble's brewing."

"Could be," Solo remarked, "What can you tell me about the Vomanor family?"

"That's a pretty extensive history, and I know you don't have that kind of attention span," Deno told him. "What specifically do you want to know?"

"I need to get an answer about something. I can't explain it to you, come with me," Han had the man follow him back to the bar. "You're going to have to see it for yourself."

The doors were open to the bar so they could just stand in the doorway and peer in. Han pointed over to the bar and Deno looked and saw the young redhead, and saw the small blue tattoo on the back of her neck.

"Oh my God," he said in a voice full of total shock, "It's true."

Paydirt. " _What's_ true?" Han wanted to know.

Deno looked completely different. His complexion was flushed and he was breaking out in a sweat, he turned and hastily stepped away from the bar with the smuggler staying right in step with him, determined to finally get some answers.

"There were rumors, gossip," Deno explained, "but there was nothing solid."

"About what?" Han asked.

"Well," Deno took in a breath and answered, "Several years ago the public suspected Josiana Vomanor was pregnant, but nothing seemed to come of it. Like I said, there were rumors."

"What _kind_ of rumors?" Han wanted to know.

"That she'd given birth to a baby girl, and that they got rid of her."

"Why, birth defects?"

"No, Solo, what do you actually _know_ about the Vomanor family?"

"They're the weirdest looking bunch of royalty I've ever seen," he answered.

"Not your typical royal family, it's a duchy, not a kingdom."

"Okay so it's Duchess Josiana Vomanor instead of Queen Josiana Vomanor, so what?" Han asked.

"In a duchy there can be several dukes, and a few princes if the luck would have it," Deno told him.

Han thought he was starting to get it, "All male heirs to the throne."

"Correct."

"But they could have more than one duchess too, right?"

"They could, in theory...but a male heir was more desirable to the Vomanors," Deno explained as the two men walked through the town square.

"So what about this girl?" Han asked.

"Well, the way I always heard it, the Vomanors had one of their servants take the baby out in the middle of the night and sell it to a group of gypsies who were docked for the night," Deno said. "Of course it would've been impossible for it to have taken place immediately following the birth."

"Why?" Han wanted to know.

The older man stopped in his tracks and turned to look at the younger smuggler and said matter-of-factly, "You're of course aware all Vomanors are born with that grin."

"Yeah."

"So if a child turned up in a gypsy party who looked like that, everybody would know what family she came from," Deno said. "To pass her off as a normal child, there would've had to be extensive surgical work and a much more extensive healing period."

"What do they do?" Han asked.

"Again, nothing was ever proven, you have to keep that in mind."

"Right, right," Han said impatiently.

"When a Vomanor is born, they are born with a complete set of 54 teeth in their mouth, so many that the sheer number and force of them folds the lips back and under, the top set is twice as long as the bottom and they always overlap."

"So I noticed," Han remarked.

"Yes well," Deno continued, "to pass a Vomanor off as any other lifeform, a surgeon would have to break both of the baby's jaws to open the mouth-" Han Solo's hand had already firmly wrapped itself over his own mouth in sympathy as that visualization hit him, the older man continued, "wide enough so all the excess teeth could be surgically removed, and all remaining teeth would be filed down to a 'normal' size so the lips would unfold to a natural shape, then the excess lip tissue would have to be removed-"

Han's eyes about squinted clear shut at the mention of those added details. Paying no mind to his apparent discomfort, Deno proceeded, "to shorten the mouth to an appropriate size, then the gaps under the cheeks would have to be fused shut."

Han absentmindedly groaned in sympathy pain before he removed his hand from his mouth and said to Deno, "Please tell me the kid would be unconscious while that was happening to them."

"Are you kidding?" Deno asked in a disbelieving tone, "Anybody receiving an operation like that would not only have to be near paralyzed, but also barely breathing to ensure nothing went wrong. A surgery of that caliber would easily require 12 hours from start to finish."

Han absently pressed his thumb against one side of his jaw and the rest of his fingers over the other side as that all sunk in. "How long would it take to recover from something like that?"

"It would be several weeks before the jaws would fully heal, and for the flesh to fuse together to close the holes in the cheeks and form a normal sized mouth that could actually close," Deno answered. "But no reputable doctor would do such a thing, too much risk..."

"No reputable doctor," the pieces were falling together, Han looked at his friend and asked him, "What about a doctor named Ursus Hardquanonne?"

The older man looked at him skeptically, "What's he got to do with anything?"

"He was riding with a gypsy ship that crashed on Ar-ra last week, everybody on board died, that kid was traveling with the ship and got separated from them during a sand storm, so she hopped onto the _Falcon_ to leave with us," Han explained.

A look of horrified revelation formed in Deno's eyes as he said in a half whisper, "My God, the rumors were true. But it still doesn't make sense, Ursus Hardquanonne hadn't been a skilled surgeon for years, the procedure would've been botched every way imaginable, the child likely would've died during the operation and if not would definitely have succumbed to infection and shock during recovery. He couldn't have pulled off something like that."

"And yet, it seems he did," Han pointed out. "So let me ask you a question, how would she stay alive during the recovery? She wouldn't have been able to eat after having both jaws broken."

"That is one of the mysteries of the Vomanor family," Deno said, "you've seen what they look like, and yet somehow they are able to eat, and however they do it, it's a skill they learn from birth."

Han remembered something and asked Deno, "I've seen her eat, every time she does, she does this," and rubbed his hand back and forth over his mouth, "is that one of their traits?"

"More likely, Hardquanonne's incompetence still finding a way to shine through."

"What do you mean?"

"Even for a top surgeon, nobody reputable would perform an operation like that on an infant because of how many risks it carried, too many ways for something to go wrong. Something _may_ have gone wrong during the fusion procedure, small flaws not visible to the human eye, but it might result in small leaks around the new corners of the mouth anytime she would eat or drink something."

Han tried to think back, he remembered seeing her at the bar on Hexlan drinking a beer but didn't pay much attention, and he hadn't been watching her the previous night when she ransacked the better part of his ship's bar, he looked over at her now and noticed her subtly brushing the back of her hand over her mouth after she swallowed her drink.

"So..." Han thought he was going to throw up as he tried to give voice to his question, "Even though she looks like us...because she was born a girl instead of a boy, her..."

"A duchess was mutilated beyond repair at the order of her own parents," Deno spelled it out for him.

This was hard enough for him to take in, but he had to press on. "What about the tattoo?"

"That was part of the rumor," Deno said, "one of the sentries was ordered to deliver the baby to the gypsies and make the transaction...he thought denying her heritage was even more cruel than deforming her, so it was said he had a branding rushed, so wherever she ended up, somebody would know she belonged to the royal family. Upon discovering this, the family had him killed upon his return to the palace."

"It makes sense," Han realized, "it's in the one place she can't ever see it and once her hair grew in, nobody else would either, she has no idea what she is."

"It was never more than idle gossip," Deno said, "you know how it is on a small planet, everybody needs something to pass the time...but nobody ever pondered about it too long, it just seemed too fantastic, too gruesome, _even_ for the royal family."

"So how old would this kid be?" Han asked.

"Oh goodness, let me think...that would've been...15, 16 years ago."

Han felt like he didn't even know what to do anymore. He felt himself half turn on one foot to move one way, then he turned and put the same amount of weight on the other foot to turn the other way. As soon as he saw that tattoo he knew something was up, but he couldn't imagine anything like this, and it felt like he didn't even know which end was up now.

"Let me ask you one more question," he said suddenly, "this male heir to the throne, did they ever get it?"

"Yes, a year later the Grand Duchess Josiana gave birth to a son."

"Is that so?" Han asked, his mind already starting to form a plan.

The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to throw up, but he was too angry for that. He still felt lost in a haze but he was starting to be able to see his way through to the end. Suddenly the last few days and everything that had happened and gone wrong for him, the money he lost, the trouble he was in with Jabba, it didn't matter, they didn't even exist anymore where he was concerned. All that existed was here and now.

"That's it," he said determinedly, half to himself and half to the older man.

"What're you talking about?" Deno asked.

"It's Crowning Day," Han said with equal determination, he took a couple steps forward and bellowed to the others, "Chewie, kid, let's go!"

"What are you doing?" Deno demanded to know.

"The royal family has a lot of explaining to do, and the rightful heir is taking the throne," Han told him.

"Have you lost your mind?" Deno asked him. "They'll kill that girl the minute they see her and they'll kill _you_ for bringing her."

Han laughed bitterly and said in response, "If I had a credit for every time somebody told me I'd get killed, I could retire from this business."

"You're making a terrible mistake," the older man warned him.

"No, I'm correcting one," he answered.

Gwynplaine and Chewbacca exited the bar and she asked the smuggler, "What's going on?"

"Change in plans, we're going to visit the royal family," he announced.

Gwynplaine shrugged her shoulders, "Why?"

"If you were smart you'd get back in your ship and leave now," Deno advised Han.

Han Solo responded by clapping his hands on the older man's weary shoulders and telling him, "Deno, you're a great man and I love you, but I know what I'm doing."

"I sincerely doubt that," Deno replied, "but I know I can't talk you out of this, unfortunately."

"I'll see you around," Han said dismissively, and waved to the others, "Come on, we're going to the palace."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In creating the description of the Vomanor family's physical characteristics, I drew inspiration from both the 1928 movie 'The Man Who Laughs' and the 1961 movie 'Mr. Sardonicus'.

It would've been faster to get back to the _Falcon_ and fly it onto the royal property, but Han also knew that was a good way to get shot down and they couldn't waste anymore time or resources on repairs right now. Instead they headed back the way they came, took a right at the fork in the road, and walked up to the palace.

"Why are we doing this?" Gwynplaine asked curiously.

"We're going to seek an audience with the royal family," was all Han told her.

"But why?"

"Have you ever heard of the Vomanor family?"

She shook her head, "I don't think so."

"So you've never seen them."

She shook her head again, "Uh-uh."

"Well you're in for a real treat then," he said cynically.

"Are these the people you owe money to that you were talking about?" she asked.

"No."

"Then I don't understand," Gwynplaine said as they trekked up and down several hills following the road to the castle, "why are we going there?"

"Trust me, you'll have to see it to believe it," he told her.

Chewbacca chattered his own response to this idea.

"Hey, I've got a plan," Han told him.

They got close enough to reach the outer gates separating them from the property. The gates appeared to be some kind of reinforced carbon and were twice as tall as Chewie, and on the inside various landspeeders and hovercrafts made their rounds. Han looked through the bars and spotted a few guards on foot nearby. "Hey! Open the gate."

Some of the guards were dressed in white armor resembling imperial troopers, others wore black armor of a similar build and others wore a bronze colored armor that looked like scaly reptilian skin. They all carried blasters and rifles, and three of them approached the gate, their weapons drawn.

"State your purpose," one of the guards in black said, his helmet distorting his voice to sound more ominous than it probably really did.

"We're here to see the royal family," Han said simply, with an air of authority.

"On what business?" another guard asked.

"They'll know it when they see us," he answered.

"Who are you?"

"That is irrelevant," Han told them. "Tell the grand duke and duchess that their presence is required out here _right now_ , or take us in to see them."

"Your request is denied."

"That's no request," Han shot back, "That is an _order_. We're not going anywhere until we see the royal family."

One of the guards came close enough to the gate that Chewie was able to reach through and grab him and try to pull him _through_ the bars, the guard let out an excruciating scream of pain and immediately the three of them found themselves surrounded.

* * *

"So I didn't think that plan all the way through," Han replied to Chewbacca's comment as they sat in the palace dungeon, "I still got us inside the castle, I got us that much closer to the Vomanor family. That's still progress."

The wookiee snorted disagreeably in response.

"I still don't get it," Gwynplaine said from where she sat by one of the dungeon walls. "Why'd we have to come here? What's so important about this royal family?"

Han hadn't actually planned to tell Gwynplaine the truth until they'd confronted the Vomanors, he figured by then everything would fall into place. But since it didn't look like that was going to happen for a while, he didn't see the problem in telling the kid the truth. She had a right to know about her legacy, that finally, they had found where she came from, where she belonged, and he'd be damned if he didn't see her take her rightful spot at the throne.

Still, it was a lot to hit her with all at once, so he started slowly.

"A long time ago the Vomanors did something they shouldn't have, and I'm going to see that it gets righted once and for all."

"What?" Gwynplaine shrugged, "What did they do?"

He breathed in a sigh and started to explain, "They had-"

A sudden noise interrupted him and got their attention. A guard came to the cell door and announced curtly, "The Vomanors will see you."

"See? I told you I'd get us to them," Han said as the door was opened and the three of them were led out of the cell.

From there, they were escorted at weapon point by several guards through a long dark corridor in the subsection of the palace, up an elevator to the main floor, and along a vast corridor full of double doors ten feet high. Along the way, Han felt a by now familiar sensation of Gwynplaine grabbing the back of his belt and clinging to him, this time he didn't force her back. He himself was starting to wonder just what he'd gone and gotten them into, but he wasn't about to admit that.

They were brought to a set of doors that opened, and they stepped into a massive room, he tried to look around and get a good look at the place but it all seemed to pass in a blur, before he knew it the three of them stood in the middle of the room, the kid was right behind him and Chewie stood behind her to block the guards from trying anything, and Han found they were surrounded by Vomanors, who were seated on their thrones on all sides of the room. He'd seen them from a distance years ago, seeing all those faces with those huge inhuman sneering grins, it was an unnerving experience.

"Great," he murmured to himself, "A room full of ventriloquists."

"State your purpose here."

He looked around, feeling Gwynplaine match his every move, turning every time, every inch, that he did. Nobody had moved. He was almost certain it had been a man's voice, the members of the royal family looked pretty evenly matched, half of the people on the thrones were men, the other half wore long dresses, and every single one of them wore that same sardonic expression, like staring at a bunch of hideous masks from a masquerade party. Gwynplaine's hands gripped his belt tighter and he felt her body pressed right up against his. Han's mind was reeling, this kid had actually been born looking like these people?

"Uh...I'm sorry," he turned and looked one way and another, "Who said that?"

"I did," he followed the voice to one of the men who stood up from his throne. "You address the Grand Duke Lucreto. You sought an audience with us."

"I _did_ ," Han said, feeling dumbstruck by the almost zoetrope effect of the same ghastly grinning faces staring back at him from every corner of the room, it felt like the walls were spinning.

"Who are you and what is your business here?"

"Uh..." he had to force his eyes shut to block out that image, for some reason it was making him feel lightheaded, he forced them back open as he said, "My name is Han Solo. My business here is...is..."

Gwynplaine about knocked him down pressing herself even harder against him as she said in a half whisper of terror, "They're monsters."

Han definitely understood the feeling, he had seen every kind of life form imaginable, or he thought he had, but none of the species' with tails or scaly skin or 50 eyes or two heads or tentacles or the ones that left a trail of slime behind them when they slithered, none of them, no matter how bizarre they might look, could compare to the monstrosities he was looking at now. Somewhere in him he was aware that their physical appearance only had about half to do with his disgust, he knew the truth of what kind of monsters they were, who'd pay some butcher to maim one of their own, a damn infant, and get rid of her like a piece of trash.

"Who said that?" a voice shot out from across the room. Han looked back and forth again but he couldn't figure out who had said it. Everybody stood stone still and there was no way to indicate where the question had come from.

It was one of the women, she stood up from her throne and demanded, "I demand you show yourself, this instance."

Han felt Gwynplaine's hands loosening their grip on him, very slowly, very timidly, she stepped out from behind him and moved forward to face the Vomanor family.

An ear splitting scream filled the room, Han saw the woman they were coming from and he guessed that this must be the grand duchess he'd heard so much about. That unsightly grin never moved, none of the muscles in the lower half of her face had moved, but her eyes had become balls of fire. He didn't know what had happened but he knew one thing, that was a scream of terrified recognition, somehow that women _knew_ this was the child she'd thrown away years ago, and was very well aware of the threat her presence presented now.

"Infidels!" she screamed loud enough that Han thought his ears were going to bleed. She pointed a long finger towards them and commanded the guards, "Execute them!"

Chewbacca grabbed the two guards nearest him and slammed their heads together hard enough that even through their helmets the fatal _crunch_ could be heard before their bodies slumped to the floor. Han stole the blaster off of one and started firing at the ones remaining.

"Come on!" he told the others when he saw nobody was watching the doors.

Gwynplaine made a beeline for the door but was caught before she could pass through. She was spun around and came face to face with one of the Vomanors, a young male who looked about her own age. He gripped her by the shoulders hard enough that something was about to break. Through those massive teeth in that unmoving grin, he hissed at her, "Die infidel scum."

With a strangled scream, Gwynplaine raised one hand enough to ram her knife into his throat. He made a choked sound as he left go of her, both hands instinctively going to his throat, she tried to extract the blade but it was stuck. His whole body was jerked forward as she tried again to pull the knife out, finally it gave way and she was able to run away from the ghoulish grin on the face of the dying man sprawled on the floor as he bled out.

Han and Chewie had made it into the hall and were looking for a way out, encountering guards every time they turned a corner. Sometimes shooting them with a blaster worked, sometimes Chewie had to grab one and throw them into the wall with enough force to fracture their skulls through their helmets. He collected a rifle off one of them and fired at other approaching guards. Han paused right beside a huge window as he heard someone else coming, he waited until he saw them, and he fired at them. He missed, they fired, they missed him, but only because he saw it coming and threw himself back and out of the way. Unfortunately he threw himself against the window at the same time the blast hit it, the glass exploded into a million pieces and Han fell through and hit the ground down below.

Time seemed to stand still, Han wasn't aware of anything, it didn't even dawn on him that he wasn't breathing, until he finally sucked in a pained inhale that came back out as a groan. He opened his eyes and was looking up at the sky, for a second he didn't remember anything. Then he heard a familiar wookiee howl and saw Chewbacca jump out of the window and saw that massive furry body coming right at him, but he didn't move, he wasn't even sure if he could move, it hurt like hell just to breathe. To his relief, Chewie landed a few feet away from him, wookiees always seemed to land on their feet, and he did, then he grabbed Han by the arm and pulled him to his feet, chattering.

"I'm okay," Han forced the words out, not really sure if he was or not, "I'm okay." He found he could turn his head, and did, and asked Chewbacca, feeling more than a slight sensation of panic starting to run through him, "Where's the girl?"

He heard her yelling and she sounded far away, he looked up and saw her appear in the giant hole that was the window a minute ago. She had a rifle slung over her shoulder and had a blaster in each hand she'd apparently taken off some of the dead guards along the way, and as a blast just missed her, she jumped out of the window.

Luckily for her, Chewbacca caught her about five feet before she hit the ground, and set her on her feet.

"Now what?!" she screamed at Han.

"Now we get back to the _Falcon_ ," he answered.

" _How_?!" Gwynplaine demanded to know.

Good question. Han looked around and saw the remaining guards and sentries were coming for them. He fired his blaster at one who was driving a landspeeder built for four right towards them, the vehicle crashed as the driver crumbled in the seat. As soon as that threat was eliminated, 20 more popped up and the smuggler and the wookiee had their hands full.

Gwynplaine ran over to the landspeeder and paused when she actually saw the driver. The shot from the blaster had taken off part of his helmet as well as part of his head, the remnants of it were still smoking and a gruesome sight. She grimaced in horror and disgust at the sight of it, but she pushed past it to try and figure out what to do. Reluctantly, she stepped in, set the rifle and blasters in the back seat, reached over and pushed the fresh corpse's body over the side, the top half toppled over the edge, she had to put her weight into it to upend the lower half of his body so his legs spilled over as well as the torso they were attached to. Once the dead body was finally out, she put herself in the driver's seat and looked at the controls, trying to figure out how to operate it. Having next to no idea what she was doing, she tried to get the vehicle moving, and in doing so it slammed forward so quick that she was almost thrown clear out of it. She got it to stop, and tried again, going slightly slower this time, but fast enough to pull up on the scene of Han Solo and Chewbacca slowly but surely working their way through the guards, but they were still vastly outnumbered.

Han was getting off shots left and right, his mind was in reaction mode instead of actually thinking, but he snapped back to his senses when he felt some of the hair on the side of his head get singed off by a blast. He stopped and stood there wide eyed for a second, then actually reached up and felt where the hair had been blasted off, it took a few seconds to realize his head hadn't been hit as well, and he looked around trying to figure out who was responsible, and his eyes widened even more when he saw Gwynplaine in the front of the inert landspeeder firing a rifle at the guards.

"Come on!" he told Chewie as they made their way through the fighting.

"Oh boy am I glad to see you," Gwynplaine said as they approached the landspeeder.

"Move over!" Han bellowed as he stepped over the side and took the controls, Chewie stepped over the opposite side into the back seat as Han got them moving.

"What about the gate?" Gwynplaine asked.

One of the guards got off a shot that about took both their heads off.

"We gotta get to it first," Han pointed out as he got the speeder moving, "hold on!"

Another shot nearly hit the landspeeder, Gwynplaine let out a curse Han wasn't overly familiar with and she grabbed the rifle, half threw herself over the side of the speeder and fired back at the guards. Han did a double take when he realized how accurate her shot was.

Compared to the _Falcon_ a landspeeder was kids' stuff, Han was able to handle it with such ease he realized they were coming upon the gate a lot faster than he originally thought.

"Chewie, grab her!" he said, realizing they were about to hit the gate head-on, "I'm gonna try something!"

Chewbacca howled as he grabbed Gwynplaine and pulled her into the backseat with him and shielded her body with his. There was a sickening deafening noise to match the jolting impact of the speeder hitting the gate. By some miracle Han had hit it with enough force to knock the doors open, the front of the landspeeder was all smashed up, but it was still operable, for now. Unfortunately he knew there were more guards behind them, and it wouldn't take them long to catch up. He himself needed to catch his breath and when he did it felt like his insides had been as smashed up as the front of the vehicle.

The sight of the _Millennium Falcon_ coming into view as they approached it, was the most glorious thing Han could ever remember seeing. He hit the brakes and the three of them piled out and ran for the boarding ramp, Han knew the guards would be closing in on them soon.

Han took enough time to risk one glance back and he told Chewbacca, "We gotta get going, we're about to have company."

"Let's hope the hyperdrive actually _works_ this time!" Gwynplaine said as they entered the ship.

"Get strapped in!" Han ordered as he ran for the cockpit.

They had just started to leave the ground when he saw the royal family's armada show up, which promptly opened fire on the cruiser. Han got a few blasts off from the laser cannon before they finally exited the planet's atmosphere. Even for how disciplined Han Solo was in knowing the right moment to activate the hyperdrive so as not to collide with a black hole, he also couldn't wait to put as much distance between himself and everybody on Alavak as was possible.


	10. Chapter 10

The flight had passed mostly in silence, the hyperdrive had made excellent time getting them halfway across the galaxy and away from Alavak, nobody had said a word for the longest time. Han kept his mind on piloting his ship, kept his eyes glued to the dark vastness of space straight ahead, anytime he checked the monitors he moved only his eyes, his head remained staring straight ahead.

Finally it was Gwynplaine who broke the silence by asking in a voice weathered and about broken, "Why did we have to go to that planet and see those _horrible_ people?"

He blinked. His eyes burnt like he'd been up for days. He remained as he was, staring straight ahead, so he didn't have to look her in the eyes, all he was willing to say was a nonchalant, "It was a mistake."

Gwynplaine sat down in the seat beside his to look over at him and she asked him point blank but not accusingly, "Were you going to leave me there?"

Finally he turned and looked at her. He looked her dead in the eyes, and said with more conviction than he'd ever put into any lie, "No...of course not. Don't be stupid."

That was the whole of their conversation. Gwynplaine got up and left the cockpit, Chewie, who'd been standing by the doorway, took his rightful seat alongside Han.

"Don't say it," he warned the wookiee, looking around at all the monitors to avoid having to actually focus on the discussion.

Chewbacca grunted and chattered.

"Alright, alright, I was an idiot, okay?" Han turned and leered at his friend through one eye. "There's no way I could've known it would've gone _that_ badly, or I wouldn't have done it."

He actually found himself at a loss for words for a moment. Whatever would've come out of him, his brain in that moment didn't seem able to process.

"Deno confirmed it...she was the rightful heir and they had that doctor _butcher_ her and sold her to the gypsies to cover it up," Han explained.

He sat in silence for a moment as the whole thing rushed back to him. He'd heard and witnessed a lot of inexplicable things in his life, but this one took the crown.

"We spent all this time trying to figure out what to do with her, where to put her, turns out not only does she have an actual family still alive, it's a royal family..." He looked at Chewbacca through the corner of his eye, then turned his head to actually see the wookiee as he pointed out, "She's a duchess, she has this whole birthright at her fingertips, and they were ready to kill her as soon as they realized who she was. That..." the word stuck in his throat as he remembered the Grand Duchess screaming for Gwynplaine's execution, "Her own _mother_ , that's just rich," he cynically grumbled, "That's just terrific...kill her own kid so they don't have to face what they did. That's just-" the Corellian expletive was drowned out by the sound of the smuggler actually banging his head against the control board, not even seeming to be aware that he'd done it as he sat up straight in his seat again, "perfect...ouch."

* * *

Han opened his eyes and shot up in his seat and only then realized he'd fallen asleep at the controls. He didn't know how long he'd been asleep, but as his mind cleared, an idea suddenly came to him. He checked their current location and felt like things were starting to fall into place.

Chewbacca entered the cockpit and Han inquired, "Where's the kid?"

The wookiee responded, and Han seemed pleased with the answer.

"I've got an idea, we're not that far from Flurm," Han started to say.

Chewie broke in with a comment of his own.

"No I'm _not_ going to try pawning her off on that nurse, I've got a better idea. And I just know that come tomorrow I'm going to hate myself for it."

* * *

"What're we doing at the sick bay?" Gwynplaine asked the next day when she saw where Solo had landed the ship.

"After crashing that gate yesterday, we need to get checked out for any internal injuries," Han answered. "It's all routine, we'll be in and out quick."

"Oh-kay," she replied uncertainly, "If you say so."

"You ever been examined before?" Han asked her.

Gwynplaine shook her head.

"Well I'll go first just to show you there's nothing to it."

* * *

Gwynplaine lay unconscious on the medical table in the treatment room.

"You certainly have one hell of a way of making an appearance after two years, you know that, Solo?" the nurse asked Han as she glanced over the medical droids to make sure everything was status quo.

"I try," he replied. "So what'd you find?"

One of the droids beeped and chirped, the nurse hit it in the back of its head to get the readout.

"Magnifications are set at 50 plus," the nurse said as she gazed into the droid's optic scan, "You were right, two improperly healed incisions."

"You can fix that, right?" Han asked.

"Oh sure," the blonde woman said as she pulled back, "it's a common procedure."

"Really?" Han blinked.

"Well yeah, we get people who were in all kinds of accidents when they were younger, of course back then the tools to correct it weren't quite as advanced as they are now, so a lot of them didn't heal right," she explained.

"How long will it take?" he wanted to know.

"Oh the surgery's quick and minimally intrusive...but it will cost you."

"How much?" he grunted.

"How much you got?" she shot back knowingly.

Letting out a frustrated sigh, Han went with a seldom used approach, the truth, "I have 1,200 credits."

"For you," the nurse told him, "we can do it for 800."

"You're all heart, Zuri," Han sarcastically replied. "When can you start?"

"Now."

* * *

Han and Chewbacca stood outside the surgical bay and peered in through the window as the doctor started to work on Gwynplaine.

The wookiee made that whining but not whining sound and sounded sympathetic.

Han managed a grim smile and tried to downplay it, "It's alright, Chewie, it's not the first time I've been broke and it won't be the last time I've been broke, that's just the way this work goes sometimes, we both know that...I'll hold Jabba off for a while longer, and in the meantime we'll keep our ears open for anybody else looking for a big haul, something will come along, people _always_ need something smuggled."

Chewbacca's next comment sparked a small but more genuine smile as Han resisted the urge to laugh.

He turned his head enough to look at the wookiee and told him, "You're a great friend, Chewie, and I appreciate you sticking around through all this insanity. Anybody else would've jumped ship a long time ago." Or, the other side of it was, if it had been anybody else, the two of them probably would've killed each other long before now, but if that thought hadn't crossed Chewbacca's mind yet, Han didn't want him getting any ideas now.

The sound of someone knocking on glass got his attention. Turning to the window again, Han saw the nurse standing on the other side in front of him, she rapped on the glass and signaled that the surgery had been a success. Han let out a sigh of relief he hadn't even felt building in him.

The doors to the surgical bay slid open and the nurse exited. "I told you, quick, minimally invasive."

"Great, how long until she wakes up?" Han asked.

"Not too long," Zuri answered.

"Any chance she'll remember this?" he wanted to know.

"Not at all," she told him.

"Any after-effects we need to know about?" he asked.

She shook her head, "Not at all, she's as good as new now."

Han sighed and shook his head in disbelief. 800 credits, 10 minutes, and that kid's whole life would've been different, instead of taking her whole life to become 'as good as new'.

* * *

Gwynplaine felt her heart starting to race in her chest despite her even timed breaths. It slowly dawned on her that she was asleep, with slight difficulty she got her eyes to open and saw Han Solo and Chewbacca standing over her, and slowly she came to the realization she was on the medical table.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"You fell asleep during the exam," Han told her.

A large yawn escaped her as her eyes tried to close again, "I'm sorry."

"Come on, get up."

Before her eyes were open, she felt a set of hands on her and felt herself being pulled up so she could slip off the table.

"Did they find anything?" she asked as she inched her way off and felt her feet land on the floor, then got her eyes to open again and stay open this time.

"Nope, everything's clear," Han answered, "let's get out of here."

"I thought you'd never ask," she said groggily but cynically.


End file.
